“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…
We must rapidly begin [applause], 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.”
… Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from “Beyond Vietnam” (April 4, 1967)
President Bush laid a wreath at Dr. King’s grave yesterday, then meditated for 15 seconds. Busy man that he is, he couldn’t afford to stay longer. As we all know, when people are paying $2,000 a plate to see your grinning face behind a podium, it is so impolite to keep them waiting. In retrospect, he could’ve made even more than his disappointing $1.3 million by just slinging that memorial wreath out his limousine window and arriving a few minutes earlier.
