In the days ahead, we must not consider it unpatriotic to raise certain basic questions about our national character. We must begin to ask "Why are there forty-million poor people in a nation overflowing with such unbelievable affluence?" Why has our nation placed itself in the position of being God's military agent on earth, and intervened recklessly in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic? Why have we substituted the arrogant undertaking of policing the whole world for the high task of putting our own house in order?
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1968
"Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" p. 133
more after the flip:
A few years ago on MLK Day, I began to read King's last book all the way through. I'd read parts of it in college, and had always meant to hit the rest of it when I had more time. It's called "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" There are parts that are now of only historical interest, but at least half or more of the book is still profoundly relevant to the nation and the world today. Unfortunately, as much as that fact speaks well for King's vision and his writing, it also speaks poorly of our progress as a national and world community. Anyway, I thought I'd like to share one of my favorite passages from the book, and one of the most relevant in today's America.
In the days ahead, we must not consider it unpatriotic to raise certain basic questions about our national character. We must begin to ask "Why are there forty-million poor people in a nation overflowing with such unbelievable affluence?" Why has our nation placed itself in the position of being God's military agent on earth, and intervened recklessly in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic? Why have we substituted the arrogant undertaking of policing the whole world for the high task of putting our own house in order?
All these questions remind us that there is a need for a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society. For its very survival's sake, America must re-examine old presuppositions and release itself from many things that for centuries have been held sacred. For the evils of racism, poverty and militarism to die, a new set of values must be born. Our economy must become more person-centered than property- and profit-centered. Our government must depend more on its moral power than on its military power.
Let us, therefore, not think of our movement as one that seeks to integrate the Negro into all the existing values of American society. Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1968
"Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" p. 133