Silence Is Betrayal
Monday 05 April 2010
by: Stephen Rohde |
On April 4, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., delivered
a historic speech at
which has become known as "Beyond
Break Silence."
In a powerful and inspiring speech, Dr. King declared
that his deep religious faith would no longer allow him
to confine himself to the domestic struggle for civil
rights. Instead, he was compelled to denounce the war
in
was doing to
He declared that "[a] time comes when silence is
betrayal." Today, ignoring Dr. King's warnings, our
country is engaged in foreign wars in
and
is betrayal.
Dr. King knew well the daunting task he faced. "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."
Early in his speech, Dr. King made the immediate
connection between the cost of war abroad and the unmet
needs of the people at home. Recalling the hopes and
"new beginnings" of the poverty program, Dr. King
bemoaned "the buildup in
program "broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle
political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I
knew that
funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long
as adventures like
skills and money like some demonic destructive suction
tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as
an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such."
In words so achingly true today, Dr. King spoke of his
deep concern for "our troops there as anything else.
For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to
in
goes on in any war where armies face each other and
seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process
of death, for they must know after a short period there
that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are
really involved. Before long they must know that their
government has sent them into a struggle among
Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize
that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure
while we create hell for the poor."
"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I
speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering
poor of
laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose
culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of
hopes at home and death and corruption in
speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it
stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an
American to the leaders of my own nation. The great
initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop
it must be ours."
Consequently, in words we so yearn to hear today from
President Barack Obama, Dr. King declared: "The world
now demands a maturity of
able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have
been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in
the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we
must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In
order to atone for our sins and errors in
should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this
tragic war."
But Dr. King refused to leave it there. "The war in
the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering
reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and
laymen-concerned committees for the next generation.
They will be concerned about
will be concerned about
will be concerned about
will be marching for these and a dozen other names and
attending rallies without end unless there is a
significant and profound change in American life and
policy. Such thoughts take us beyond
beyond our calling as sons of the living God."
Dr. King foretold that 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 To get on the right side of history,
Dr. King called for "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."
As if he could hear President Obama boasting about
"spreading democracy in
that 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."
Analyzing the obsession with anti-communism, in terms
we would be wise today to apply to the obsession with
anti-terrorism, Dr. King said that "It is a sad fact
that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of
communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice,
the Western nations that initiated so much of the
revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now
become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven
many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary
spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our
failure to make democracy real and follow through on
the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies
in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit
and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring
eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.
With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge
the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the
day when 'every valley shall be exalted, and every
mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked
shall be made straight and the rough places plain. "
With an insistence as compelling today as it was over
40 years ago, Dr. King declared: "We are now faced with
the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with
the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum
of life and history there is such a thing as being too
late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life
often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with
a lost opportunity. The 'tide in the affairs of men'
does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out
desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time
is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached
bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are
written the pathetic words: 'Too late.' There is an
invisible book of life that faithfully records our
vigilance or our neglect. 'The moving finger writes,
and having writ moves on...' We still have a choice
today; nonviolent coexistence or violent
co-annihilation."
Dr King urged us to "move past indecision to action"
and find "new ways to speak for peace and justice" for
if "we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the
long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for
those who possess power without compassion, might
without morality, and strength without sight."
"Now let us begin," Dr. King concluded. "Now let us
rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter - but
beautiful - struggle for a new world. This is the
calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait
eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too
great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard?
Will our message be that the forces of American life
militate against their arrival as full men, and we send
our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message,
of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their
yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the
cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it
otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of
human history."
Can we do any less in the face of the monstrous wars in
to end these war now? Is it too hard to speak to loyal
Americans who have yet to see that their government has
lied to them? Shall we just send our regrets to the
families here and around the world who will lose their
children, husbands and wives today and tomorrow while
we remain silent and inert?
As it was for Dr. King then, it is for us now a
"crucial moment of human history."
Stephen Rohde, a constitutional lawyer and author, is
Chair of Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace.
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