The crowning achievement in hypocrisy must go to those staunch Republicans and Democrats of the Midwest and West who were given land by our government when they came here as immigrants from Europe. They were given education through the land grant colleges. They were provided with agricultural agents to keep them abreast of forming trends. They were granted low-interest loans to aid in the mechanization of their farms. And now that they have succeeded in becoming successful, they are paid not to farm. And these are the same people that now say to black people—whose ancestors were brought to this country in chains, and who were emancipated in 1863 without being given land to cultivate or bread to eat—that they must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. What they truly advocate is socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.
Racism can well be that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on western civilization.
Our moral lag must be redeemed. When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men.
When we foolishly maximize the minimum and minimize the maximum, we sign the warrant for our own day of doom.
We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves, and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor—both black and white, both here and abroad.
We believe, we hope, we pray that something new might emerge in the political life of this nation, which will produce a new man, new structures and institutions, and a new life for mankind. I am convinced that this new life will not emerge until our nation undergoes a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A civilization can flounder as readily in the face of moral bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar, it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
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 anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. In a sense, communism is a judgment of our failure to make democracy real and to follow through on the revolutions that we initiated.
Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” Vanity asks the question, “Is it popular?” But conscience asks the question, “Is it right?” And on some positions it is necessary for the moral individual to take a stand that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because it is right! And we say to our nation tonight, we say to our government, we even say to our FBI: we will not be harassed, we will not make a butchery of our conscience, we will not be intimidated, and we will be heard!
