For those who ask the question, “Aren’t you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. Through his use of imagery, diction, and parallel structure, Martin Luther King Jr associates the war in Vietnam with injustice in his famous speech, “Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence.”. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. 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. “Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people?” they ask. 1 Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. America will be! This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. Because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned, especially for His suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos. Beyond Vietnam A Time To Break Silence. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Read on for background on the historic speech, highlights and the speech in in its entirety. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. 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. Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism. They’re all passages that try to convince the reader of the veracity of the author’s claim 2. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation’s role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. America never was America to me, While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible. I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues 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 recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. We must stop now. Beyond Vietnam / A Time to Break Silence Background. Is it among these voiceless ones? My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years, especially the last three summers. In addition, we provide Editing services for those who are not sure in a quality and clarity Beyond Vietnam A Time To Break Silence Essay Sampleof their written texts. We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, some of the most distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” “Peace and civil rights don’t mix,” they say. This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated: And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside Church. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. Body Paragraph 1 He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. So, too, with Hanoi. 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.”. So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. 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. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans. I heard him speak so many times. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. * And I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was also a commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of man. We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. 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. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.”. The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: “Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?” “Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” “Peace and civil rights don’t mix,” they say. 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. are available to teachers What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? Martin Luther King, Jr., delivering speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, Riverside Church, New York City, April 4, 1967. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. Dr. King’s purpose is to make the church leaders he is … Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Overall, in his speech "Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence", King effectively creates a persuasive argument wherein he establishes the Vietnam war and it's effects as immoral - as is the example it sets and sustains in America. 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. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? We must stop now. Senator Barry Goldwater (AZ), the Republican Party presidential nominee in 1964, said the speech “could border a bit on treason.”, Civil Rights activist and U.S. Representative John Lewis (GA), who was among the 3,800 in the audience when King gave the speech, told the New Yorker Magazine in 2017 that the speech was “a speech for all humanity—for the world community. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that “America will be” are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land. How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of “aggression from the North” as if there was nothing more essential to the war? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a speech named, “Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence” addressing the Vietnam War. What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. 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. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. Could we blame them for such thoughts? I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. 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