I must say that I've felt like my heart has been ripped out the past couple of weeks as we edge ever forward towards TOTAL Nuclear Annihilation. Our leaders in the EU, in the US, in Russia, in Georgia (or wherever) are playing a game that if they miscalculate then that's it - Homo Sapiens becomes extinct! Despite the anger I can feel rising that a bunch of selfish morons can gamble with the fate of humankind for energy resources and for their eternal greed, and despite that if I met our leaders I would probably not be able to contain this anger that they dare threaten our lives and that of our children, today I came across a speech that reaffirmed why I believe non-violence is the answer. But more than that it reaffirms why, despite the dissenting voices and those that say 'you can't speak up, they will come for you too', I must speak up. I must stand against the madness and hold my lonely candle in the darkness 'for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.'
The following is just a few excerpts of a speech made in 1967 by Martin Luther King, Jr. Four decades later his words ring as true as they did then. At the time he was speaking against the Vietnam war but it is so easy to substitute this for Iraq or any other region suffering
I strongly recommend you read the whole speech and the few sound files.
...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 perplexing 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...
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.
...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 non-violent action. But they asked, and rightly so, what about Vietnam? They asked 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. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent...
...I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies...not the junta...but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war... I think of them too because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.
...we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy...Now they languish under our bombs...
...Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-violence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
...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 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...
...This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote, "Each day the war goes on, the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism...
...A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death...
...We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. 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...
