On the eve of the anniversary of the assassination of MLK Jr., I thought it would be appropriate to post a video here of one of King's less popular speeches. Less popular because it does not showcase his familiar vision of racial and spiritual harmony, but instead criticizes America as hegemonic, militaristic and arrogant. Less popular because it instead promulgates the idea that dissent is perhaps the most fundamental tenet of our democracy and because King tied together the damage caused by an imperialistic war with that of a government unconcerned by the domestic plights of poverty and hunger in its own country.

Listening to this speech I am humbled by the power of King's words. There is a great sense of disappointment in his words, yes, but there is a powerful distinction between disappointment and resignation. Disappointment by nature requires a belief in a higher moral ideal as a priori to the standard being upheld, whereas resignation implies moral and spiritual passivity. King clearly believes in a higher ground that America can reach for and indeed calls for a "radical revaluation of values". King is prophetic and could be speaking today:

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 immense profits of overseas investments. 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.

And later:

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.

Reading this, I am led to wonder, where is the moral courage of our age. Where is the strength and fortitude that instills a man like Martin Luther King, who saw injustice and made it his life duty to call it out and to protest it, no matter the consequence. It is certainly in none of our candidates for president. I respect Obama and I perceive strong moral values at his core, but not at the level of King or the movement that once existed in this country. By many standards, the war in Iraq has been a graver injustice than the war in Vietnam. We have spent $3 trillion on a war without pretence, while at home our citizens cannot afford healthcare, our teachers are underpaid, poverty levels continue to rise and now an economic crisis has taken hold. We have spent $3 trillion on a war that has resulted in the deaths of over 4,000 Americans and, lest we forget, the 90,000+ Iraqi citizens that have perished as result of our presence (is it odd that the number 4,000 is boldly in my mind, but I had to scour the web for the civilian toll, which, as it were, is only the documented casualties; thousands more have surely perished). Where is the fury and the moral indignation of the youth? Of the media? When can we finally say enough is enough?

Tags: MLK, Vietnam, Poverty, Iraq War, Barack Obama