Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the ever-famous "I have a dream" speech in August of 1963. Eye witness accounts and close friends have remarked since his death, that for at least half that speech, MLK stumbled and sweated over his words, looking as if he'd run off the platform in an instance. He eventually struck a chord deep within himself and with the listeners, and, well we know the outcome.

However, 4 years later and one year before his murder, King gave an impassioned speech at Riverside Church in New York City. The topic? His opposition to the Vietnam War.

Read it. Especially his 7 reasons for opposing the war. It sounds eeriely familiar to a few cries out of the wilderness today concerning the turbulence in the Middle East. Is this the voice America needs today?

...I knew that I could never again raise 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.


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. This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances.


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.

Amen