The Martin Luther King that Obama doesn't want you to remember

[The Northerner]

Run time: 04:01 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj1aA_DkXnA   Posted on YouTube: October 17, 2011 By YouTube Member: StoptheWarCoalition Views on YouTube: 642   Posted on DU: October 18, 2011 By DU Member: The Northerner Views on DU: 2393

 
When President Obama spoke at the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington on 16 October 2011, he didn't recall these words of MLK about the Vietnam war:

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

This is the Martin Luther King that Barack Obama, who is waging seven wars -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Uganda -- wants you to forget.

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[RufusTFirefly]

2. To a great extent, MLK has been sanitized and Disney-fied

How many schoolchildren (or grownups) realize he said things like this?

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government.

A Time to Break the Silence -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. April 4, 1967

[phleshdef]

3. We currently spend more on Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security than on defense.

Those 3 programs alone are twice the percentage of GDP that defense spending is. And thats not even counting student aid, non-medicaid related poverty assistance programs or any of the other things that the government spends money on in terms of helping people.

When MLK awas alive and made the quote you are referencing., this was not the case and it was pretty much the reverse. Defense was much a much higher percentage of GDP than social welfare programs in the 1960s. LBJ hadn't even signed Medicare into law yet I don't believe.

Regardless, based on the facts, your entire premise is pretty much dead on arrival. Sorry to burst your little bubble of hyperbole.

[Poll_Blind]

4. +1

MLK had a fine mind and an excellent understanding of how to use English to express those thoughts with as little impedance as possible in the conversion from one to another. Truly a gift, even now, to us all.

PB

[msongs]

6. yeah but he didn't blast people with drones or send troops to Uganda or anywhere else nt

[Poll_Blind]

7. You're correct. That would be President Obama, who seems to have a sweet tooth for many of Bush's...

...policies.

PB

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[phleshdef]

10. No. I don't bother with that sort of thing unless its an argument worthy of my time.

So far, the argument you are insinuating is worthy of casual mockery and thats about it.

[Name removed]

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[phleshdef]

16. I don't have blind faith in anyone. It doesn't take blind faith to realize Obama is not like Bush.

It just takes an objective eye and the ability to distinguish similarities from differences and actually understand the details of policy. I agree on a lot of Obama's policies and I disagree on a number of them. But I'm honest about reality. I don't sit around spewing bullshit that suggests that Barack Obama is anything like the lying, idiot Texan that didn't give a fuck about even doing the damn job at all. Obama's administration was a thousand times more domestically proactive in its first 2 years than the Bush administration was during its entire 8 years combined. Barack Obama works his ass off. He does bring it to the people. He does listen to what everyone has to say. He does approach policy with intellectualism rather than emotional ideological nonsense.

The only way Obama is anything like Bush are on some foreign policy/defense items. But even in that area, there are many stark differences, especially when it comes to emphasis on diplomacy and getting the international communities support.

[chill_wind]

5. Cost of War.

www.costofwar.com

He would talk about the obscene tradeoffs. I have to think he absolutely would have.



580.3 million Annual Energy Costs for a Household for One Year OR
646.0 million Children Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year OR
18.6 million Elementary School Teachers for One Year OR
122.0 million Fair Market Rent for One Bedroom Apartment for One Year OR
21.1 million Firefighters for One Year OR
165.8 million Head Start Slots for Children for One Year OR
543.7 million Households Converted to All Solar Energy for One Year OR
1.1 billion Households Converted to All Wind Energy for One Year OR
161.6 million Military Veterans Receiving VA Medical Care for One Year OR
602.2 million One Year Worth of Groceries for an Individual OR
259.2 million People Receiving Low-Income Healthcare for One Year OR
18.1 million Police or Sheriff's Patrol Officers for One Year OR
159.9 million Scholarships for University Students for One Year OR
227.1 million Students receiving Pell Grants of $5550

http://costofwar.com/en/tradeoffs/state/US/program/1/tradeoff/0

[JJW]

11. In history text books

MLK will forever be pages and O will be a sentence... "War is peace".

[malthaussen]

12. Depends on who's writing the book

I've read "history" books where whole chapters are devoted to Reagan...

-- Mal

[DeSwiss]

13. K&R

[Vattel]

14. Nice quote

One thing is certain. I don't put my faith in any politician to do what is neither safe nor politic nor popular because it is right. No doubt some do just that, but it is not the norm, and people of conscience need to constantly push politicians in the right direction.

[Xicano]

17. That is one of my favorite speeches from Martin Luther King Jr.

I would like to add this part from that same speech.

:patriot: