Title: A Time to Break Silence By Rev. Martin Luther King 4 April 1967
A small excerpt of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
on this day of commemoration of Peace in the US
(the totality of the speech is @ http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html)
In Love & Light
Markess
" I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical
revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When
machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of
racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n
the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must
come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and
robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not
haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of
values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across
the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to
take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our
alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has
everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world
order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of
filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally
humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged,
cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military
defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is
nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take
precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands
until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will
never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their
misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand
wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of
Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these
turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing
that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action
seek to remove thosse conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of
communism grows and develops.
The People Are Important
.../A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional.
Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual
societies.
This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a
call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept -- so readily
dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the
survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that
force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that
unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality
is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:
Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not
knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow
before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered
with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is
the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore
the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."
