21 January 13
His vital April 4, 1967 speech is a direct repudiation of the sophistry now used to defend US violence and aggression.
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civil right achievements of Martin Luther King are quite justly the
focus of the annual birthday commemoration of his legacy. But it is
remarkable, as I've noted before on this holiday,
how completely his vehement anti-war advocacy is ignored when
commemorating his life (just as his economic views are). By King's own
description, his work against US violence and militarism, not only in
Vietnam but generally, was central - indispensable - to his worldview
and activism, yet it has been almost completely erased from how he is
remembered.
King argued for the centrality of his anti-militarism
advocacy most eloquently on April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church in New
York City - exactly one year before the day he was murdered. That extraordinary speech
was devoted to answering his critics who had been complaining that his
anti-war activism was distracting from his civil rights work ("Peace and
civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your
people, they ask?"). King, citing seven independent reasons, was adamant
that ending US militarism and imperialism was not merely a moral
imperative in its own right, but a prerequisite to achieving any
meaningful reforms in American domestic life.
In that speech, King called the US government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today",
as well as the leading exponent of "the deadly Western arrogance that
has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long" (is there any
surprise this has been whitewashed from his legacy?). He emphasized that
his condemnations extended far beyond the conflict in Southeast Asia:
"the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit."
He insisted that no significant social problem - wealth inequality, gun
violence, racial strife - could be resolved while the US remains "a
nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military
defense than on programs of social uplift" - a recipe, he said, for
certain "spiritual death". For that reason, he argued, "it should be
incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity
and life of America today can ignore the present war." That's because:
"If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.#China #Social Media @SocialMediaCorp
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