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—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, extreme 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. On 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 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 South 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 a hand 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 the veins of peoples
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.
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., speaking April
4th, 1967,
a year to the day
before he was assassinated in Memphis.
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