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1、第 1 页 名人演讲： A Time to Break Silence1 特征码 mWnyrzOkbtznnhKjdhdL Martin Luther King: Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence I e to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and
2、work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive mittee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time es when silence is betrayal.“ And that time h
3、as e for us in relation to Vietnam. The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their governments policy, especially in time of war. Nor does th
4、e human spirit move without great difficulty 第 2 页 against all the apathy of conformist thought within ones own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmeriz
5、ed by uncertainty; but we must move on. And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And
6、we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nations history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history.
7、 Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. 第 3 页 Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the bet
8、rayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: “Why are you speak
9、ing about the war, Dr. King?“ “Why are you joining the voices of dissent?“ “Peace and civil rights dont mix,“ they say. “Arent you hurting the cause of your people,“ they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such qu
10、estions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my mitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live. In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I 第 4 页 trust concisely, w
11、hy I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church - the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate - leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight. I e to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the Nationa
12、l Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, n
13、or to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. 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 t
14、ake on both sides. Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to 第 5 页 my fellowed sic Americans, *who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents. Since I am a preacher by trade
15、, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision.* There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there w
16、as a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor - both black and white - through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were
17、some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and 第 6 页 skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I w
18、as increasingly pelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers an
19、d their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in sou
20、thwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the hu
21、ts of a po 第 7 页 or village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor. My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North o
22、ver the last three years - especially the last three summers. 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. I have tried to offer them my deepest passion while maintaining my conviction that soc
23、ial change es most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask - and rightly so - what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasnt using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again r
24、aise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the 第 8 页 sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling u
25、nder our violence, I cannot be silent. For those who ask the question, “Arent you a civil rights leader?“ and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To
26、 save the soul of America.“ We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed pletely from the shackles they still wear. In
27、 a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier: O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath - Americ 第 9 页 a will be! Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and
28、life of America today can ignore the present war. If Americas soul bees totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down t
29、he path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land. As if the weight of such a mitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1954* sic; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a mission - a missio
30、n to work harder than I had ever worked before for “the brotherhood of man.“ This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my mitment to the ministry of Jesus 第 10 页 Christ. To me the relationship of this min
31、istry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why Im speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men - for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary a
32、nd conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?
33、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. Beyond the calling of race
34、 or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and 第 11 页 because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I e tonight to speak for them. This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem our
35、selves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nations self-defined goals and positions. 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 h
36、ands can make these humans any less our brothers. And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in passion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberat
37、ion Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them 第 12 页 and hear
38、 their broken cries. They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence *in 1954* - in 1945 *rather* - after a bined French and Japanese occupation and before the munist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the
39、 American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the dea
40、dly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self- determination and a government that had been established not by China - for whom the Viet namese have no great love - but by clearly indige
41、nous 第 13 页 forces that included some munists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives. For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in th
42、eir abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military
43、supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization. After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would e again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the
44、United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all 第 14 页 opposition, supported th
45、eir extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diems methods had aroused. When Diem w
46、as overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace. The only change came from America, as we increased our troop mitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept,
47、and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and la nd reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd 第 15 页 them
48、off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must
49、 weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothe