Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence by Martin Luther King, Jr.

[proud2BlibKansan]

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence

delivered 4 April 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City



Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Recording and full text> http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

[ConsAreLiars]

1. K&R - Kings words are as true and important today as then.

It's not about Vietnam, it's about the world we live in and the need to change it.

(edit typo)