how do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? 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? they ask how we can speak of free elections when the saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. and they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. they question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. their questions are frighteningly relevant. is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?
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. 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.
so, too, with hanoi. 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. to speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in western words, and especially their distrust of american intentions now. in hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the japanese and the french, the men who sought membership in the french commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. it was they who led a second struggle against french domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at geneva. after 1954 they watched us conspire with diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought ho chi minh to power over a united vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. when we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.
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. 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.
hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier north vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. ho chi minh has watched as america has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of american plans for an invasion of the north. he knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than *eight hundred, or rather,* eight thousand miles away from its shores.
at this point i should make it clear that while i have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," i am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. for it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. we are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.
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:
(unquote).
if we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in vietnam. if we do not stop our war against the people of vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. the world now demands a maturity of america that we may not be able to achieve. it demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the vietnamese people. the situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. in order to atone for our sins and errors in vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.
*i would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:
number one: end all bombing in north and south vietnam.
number two: declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
three: take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in southeast asia by curtailing our military buildup in thailand and our interference in laos.
four: realistically accept the fact that the national liberation front has substantial support in south vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future vietnam government.
five: *set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from vietnam in accordance with the 1954 geneva agreement.
part of our ongoing...part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the liberation front. then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. we must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. meanwhile... meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. we must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in vietnam. we must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.
*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. i am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, morehouse college, and i recommend it to all who find the american course in vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. moreover, i would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors.* these are the times for real choices and not false ones. we are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in vietnam. i say we must enter that struggle, but i wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.
the war in vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the american spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. they will be concerned about guatemala and peru. they will be concerned about thailand and cambodia. they will be concerned about mozambique and south africa. we will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in american life and policy.
and so, such thoughts take us beyond vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living god.
in 1957, a sensitive american official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. during the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of u.s. military advisors in venezuela. this need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of american forces in guatemala. it tells why american helicopters are being used against guerrillas in cambodia and why american napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in peru.
it is with such activity in mind that the words of the late john f. kennedy come back to haunt us. five years ago he said, "those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." 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.
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.
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.
a true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "this way of settling differences is not just." this business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
america, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. there is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. there is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
*this kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. war is not the answer. communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the united states to relinquish its participation in the united nations.* these are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. *we must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. we must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.
these are revolutionary times. all over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. the shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. we in the west must support these revolutions.
it is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. this has driven many to feel that only marxism has a revolutionary spirit. therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. with this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."
a genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
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. this oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. when i speak of love i am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. i am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. i am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. this hindu-muslim-christian-jewish-buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of saint john: "let us love one another, for love is god. and every one that loveth is born of god and knoweth god. he that loveth not knoweth not god, for god is love." "if we love one another, god dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.
we can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. the oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. and history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. as arnold toynbee says: "love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote).
we are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. we are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. in this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. procrastination is still the thief of time. life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. the tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. we may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. 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. omar khayyam is right: "the moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."
we still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. 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.
now let us begin. now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. this is the calling of the sons of god, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. shall we say the odds are too great? shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? will our message be that the forces of american life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? the choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
名人英语演讲稿两分钟|名人英语演讲稿：A Time to Break Silence_演讲稿
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