Posted on 01/17/2005 3:32:46 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
He called it a speech to break the silence. And it created an uproar.
On April 4, 1967, before 3,000 people at New York's Riverside Church, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. denounced the Vietnam War as an "enemy of the poor" and criticized the U.S. government as the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world."
President Lyndon Johnson was enraged. And until his assassination exactly one year later, King's popularity waned.
But the controversial "Beyond Vietnam" speech had a lasting effect. Scholars and peace activists call King's words as relevant to today's war in Iraq as they were nearly four decades ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at heraldnet.com ...
"We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:
O, yes, I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath-
America will be! *
Now 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. 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. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that "America will be" are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land."
"...the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.
So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers."
"In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered."
Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and dealt death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours."
"It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." [applause] Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. 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 [applause], we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society."
"These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions."
King was a politician like all libs. He was looking to leverage a national hot topic to advance his own platform.
Anytime something comes on the air, every lib is scrambling to get onto it in order to cash in on the media exposure.
This definately shows towards the end MLK was turning Communist. Chock full of Communist code words.
Horseshit!
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. [applause] 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 engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy [applause], realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.
This kind of useful idiot blather doesn't make him any better than John Kerry in my book.
Double horseshit!
"Anytime something comes on the air, every lib is scrambling to get onto it in order to cash in on the media exposure."
All politicians do that. Not really a lib/conservative trait. Comes with thhe territory. King's problem with vietnam was that so many blacks were fighting in it, yet they weren't getting a fair shake from their country.
Now they are getting a fair shake. AND fighting honorably.
All of this rhetoric is short-sighted: if the US fails to win on the world's military stage, there won't be a cornucopia of stolen tax dollars to fuel the welfare state, because there won't be a welfare state - it will have been replaced by MOOOOOOslim slave-labor camps.
That's odd I fought in three different units in Vietnam and never saw any blaks getting anything other than more than a 'fair shake'..
imo
That's odd I fought in three different units in Vietnam and never saw any blacks getting anything other than more than a 'fair shake'..
Even after 'the strikes'...
imo
I always appreciated what the man did for civil rights for all of us having grown up in Atlanta but this speech was nothing but pure communist screed. No wonder Hoover was on his ass.
As most liberals he seemed to have forotten the fruits of communism which were much fresher in history in 1967.
And, after we pulled out in disgrace it became very clear how the collectivists maintained order in the countries they had taken over and ruined.
We took no holiday today.
According to Stolen Valor the charge that more blacks served or died in Vietnam than whites in proportion to the population at the time, is NOT true.
It was another lie, similar to Kerry being in Cambodia or
that drug use was higher in Nam than it was in the civilian population in the 70s.
He didn't have a chance to repudiate anything he said. There were a lot of people who were against the Vietnam War that are now for the WOT.
We should be free to discuss this without having the typical leftist tactic of "racist" thrown our way in order to shut down the discussion--at least not at FR. If you want to worship uncritically at the shrine of MLK, stroll over to DU and have your fill.
I'll tell you all a story about Martin Luther King Day that took place BEFORE it was made a national holiday.
I happened to be riding a Metro bus in Washington D.C., coincidentally a bus that went through Anacostia (Southeast), not exactly a real friendly place for the caucasian persuasion, if you know what I mean.
It was in the latter part of 1982, not quite a year before President Reagan signed the legislation which made King's birthday a federal holiday (what most blacks had been demanding for many years), and I was minding my own business when a young black man reading the Washington Post (an article about the King holiday issue) put his paper down and looked over at me and said 'say whitey, I guess you don't think Dr. King should have a holiday, right?'
Bus got quiet. (I was one of two non-blacks on the bus, the other one was a rather worried-looking Hispanic) I said "as a matter of fact, no, I don't think he should have a federal holiday."
Young black man's eyes got wide, voice went up, says "why NOT?!?"
I said "because that is the last thing you want to do to Dr. King's memory. Do you all love Dr. King?" Every black face around me was nodding 'yes'. I said "then don't do to Dr. King what was done to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, because if you get a federal holiday today, it might be used to honor Dr. King for a while, but sooner or later, you will see the same commercialization of his birthday that we all see every year when Washington and Lincoln's birthday comes around, are you going to be pleased when you turn on the radio and hear 'King Day Sale! King Day Sale! Free At Last! Free At Last! Buy ONE, Get one FREE!'...?" I don't think that would honor Dr. King at all, do you?
I will never forget the eerie atmosphere, and that black man shook his head and said "whitey, you just might be on to somethin".
Nobody said another word to me and I got off at the next stop and never looked back.
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