King and Vietnam

From "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam", April 30 1967:

Now, let me make it clear in the beginning, that I see this war as an unjust, evil, and futile war. I preach to you today on the war in Vietnam because my conscience leaves me with no other choice. The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. "Ye shall know the truth," says Jesus, "and the truth shall set you free." Now, I've chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.

It's a searing moment because the silence in the face of moral crisis of which King speaks is no mere cowardice or opportunism. King's life and career have been dedicated to the Civil Rights movement -- to the cause of bettering the well-being of African-Americans. And from the death of Abraham Lincoln until the present day, that cause's most crucial ally has been Lyndon Johnson who in a monumental act of political courage chose finally to decisively align the Democratic Party with the cause of Civil Rights dooming its political coalition to oblivion.

And yet here in Vietnam was Johnson's war. A Johnson increasingly in political trouble from his left. A Johnson who could very much use the support of a Martin Luther King. Indeed, a Johnson who in many ways deserves the support of a Martin Luther King. To ask a man to publicly defend a war he deplores would be too much. But would it really be so much to ask King to simply stay quiet -- to focus on his core issues, and praise Johnson on those terms -- not for King's own sake but for the sake of his movement? Who then or now would blame the great Civil RIghts leader for standing behind the great Civil Rights president? But he came to believe that it couldn't be done. That wrong was wrong and someone had to say so.

Comments

"a Johnson who in many ways deserves the support of a Martin Luther King."

I understand what you're trying to say, but you went too far here in trying to make this point.
Yes, King did take a brave stand, but I doubt his previous dealings with LBJ ever came into it. It was simply about doing what was right, as it should always be.

Posted by Mike | January 21, 2008 5:16 PM

While I take much of your point, I would call to your attention that foot soldiers--drafted or volunteers--were often the sons of the poor and relatively uneducated wjile the terms of US v. Gillette were onerous, hence in many ways opposition to the War was a civil rights issue. Johnson's trouble, like Bush's, arose out of hubris. Unlike Bush, Johnson was actually a truly tragic figure. Johnson's acts on behalf of all Americans in the 1964 and 1965 Acts cost the Democrats the South for nigh these forty years, partly because many in the South have thought to demonize the opponents of the Vietnam (really Southeast Asian)Wars. But the 1964 and 1965 Acts were the right thing to do, even as Vietnam, so many times avoidable, was not nor as the Pentagon's official reassessment by Col. Summers show could Vietnam be made the right thing to do. This is not a judgement on the soldiers; its a judgement on those who lead.

Posted by djeri | January 21, 2008 5:24 PM

So shall we all speak out today against an injustice perpetrated by our political allies?

I'm more right than left so here's mine:

The use of homophobia as a get out the vote technique by the GOP is immoral and appalling. Particularly when it is accepted or even encouraged by Republicans who are not themselves homophobic (or even have gay friends and relatives).

I realize this is a low hanging fruit, but usually I keep my mouth shut when the topic comes up because I worry about encouraging the general "Republican's are evil" meme emanating from the left. We're not, but this particular bit of nastiness brings us closer.

Posted by heedless | January 21, 2008 5:27 PM

You pleasantly surprise me on occasion, Matthew, and your final paragraph here is one of those occasions.

Posted by Petey | January 21, 2008 5:28 PM

It was simply about doing what was right, as it should always be.
Posted by Mike | January 21, 2008 5:16 PM

Let us sit and reflect for a moment, how many political leader since Kennedy, King and Bobby have "done what was right" because that is the way it should be.
Upon reflection a feeling of emptyness ensues.
Many have done what was right, because it was easy or expedient to do so. Many have done what was right, but upon further examination it was actually what was wrong and they deluded themselves into not seeing it. Most have done what was conventional and safe, the plague of our times.

No, doing the hard thing is doing the hard thing. King did the hard thing.

Posted by Northern Observer | January 21, 2008 5:29 PM

MLK was truly a giant among men. I think the most crucial ally of the civil rights movement was JFK. Sometimes I wonder how America (and history) might have turned out if both these remarkable (if flawed) men would not have fallen to an assassin’s bullet.

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | January 21, 2008 5:36 PM

This really is very well put, Matt. That's one of my favorite speeches.

Posted by southpaw | January 21, 2008 5:36 PM

Northern Observer,

Ok, but my point was that it wasn't a hard thing because he was somehow betraying LBJ. It was a hard thing because he was going against the popular sentiment around the country that supported the war. This was what turned the media against him in the long run. That was what made it brave and courageous. It had nothing to do with LBJ.

Posted by Mike | January 21, 2008 5:39 PM

As much as I like Obama, and as much as I like what King did in this case, there are many contrasts between the two and this seems like one of them. I can't imagine Obama doing anything like that at all.

Posted by Consumatopia | January 21, 2008 6:13 PM

Good post.

Posted by Korha | January 21, 2008 6:21 PM

JFK was not the friend of Civil rights that LBJ was. Whatever else you can say about him (and if you've read Caro's biography that's a lot) he did as much as any politician, before and during his presidency, to bring about civil rights laws. The tragedy of Vietnam was for LBJ was that he was sucked into a war that he did not start and which was accelerated by JFK. Whether or not JFK would have stopped the war is open to debate but at the point of his assassination it was still a growing thing. This isn't to excuse LBJ but it wasn't as though he started a war from scratch like GW.

Posted by ligedog | January 21, 2008 6:31 PM

If you bear in mind how central nonviolence was to King's life and work, you can see clearly that it was absolutely necessary for him to speak out against the war.

Posted by mary | January 21, 2008 6:35 PM

@Consumatopia

Er, Obama has already spoken out against the USA entering into an unjust and popular war.
From what I see, Obama learned well from MLK

Posted by stonetools | January 21, 2008 6:37 PM

stonetools, yeah, but think about how he later hedged to defend Kerry and Edwards' votes for the war. Perfectly reasonable and defensible, just like it would have been reasonable for King to softpedal his opposition to the war in the name of civil rights. Or a better example might be the RESTORE Act--he's on the right side, as are Clinton and Edwards, but they all could certainly choose to make a lot more noise and be a lot more annoying about it--like, say, Dodd does, or Edwards does with poverty. Obama's willing to be inspiring but rarely annoying, while Martin Luther King Jr. was both. Now, maybe it doesn't make sense for a presidential candidate to be an annoying gadfly (and maybe that's why Gore doesn't run again), but be that as it may, King was willing to be annoying, Obama hasn't been for a while. I still wanna vote for him, but this is one of many things that separates the two (not that I expect anyone to be like Dr. King.)

Posted by Consumatopia | January 21, 2008 6:53 PM

consumatopia,

It's probably not so fair to compare a politician to MLK on MLK day. No one's gonna look good in comparison.

(But maybe that's the idea.)

Posted by ben | January 21, 2008 7:07 PM

Being MLK day Cartoon Network is playing the MLK Boondocks episode. Anyone who hasn't seen it should definitely make time to do so.

Posted by Rob | January 21, 2008 7:39 PM

My voice joins the chorus of thanx for posting this. As a little (white) tyke in Montgomery, I have a few memories of the Bus Boycott. We had a 'colored' lady who watched us kids after school, did laundry, cleaned house and such. During the Boycott (which of course was the first act of 'civil disobedience' of MLK's career and made him a major southern black leader) my dad would drive her home. I remember riding along. It was the first time I'd seen her house, a shack really with exposed unpainted boards and sitting on blocks(?--anyway, I remember realizing you could see under it). I remember all those black people walking down the side of the street (no sidewalks in their part of town) on their way home from their work. There was also an atmosphere of fear. The Klan was a significant part of Alabama politics altho I didn't know it then. It was a strong experience altho I didn't know that it was a world-historical moment of course.

Anyway--for that and many other reasons, Martin has been a major part of my moral compass in my adult life. The speech you excerpted shows why.

Posted by JohnMcC | January 21, 2008 8:12 PM

"That wrong was wrong and someone had to say so."

So, Matt, since you believe that, are we going to hear about your support for letting Sibel Edmonds tell the American people what senior elected and appointed officials of their government are doing to spread drugs, weapons and nuclear black market materials to various nations?

Are we going to see you cover the Edmonds case in this blog?

Thought so.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 21, 2008 8:32 PM

BTW, for those interested, the documentary "Kill the Messenger" is here:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=1991080575212848283

Edmonds' Web site is here:

http://www.justacitizen.com/

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 21, 2008 8:36 PM

MLK was a giant the type of which you seldom see. Comparing MLK, even implicitly, to others violates history, MLK and the person used in comparison. MLK's peers are Gandhi and Mandela.

All three Democratic candidates are persons of compromise, politician living within a political machine and all already have enough missteps to shed negative light on them, if this is what you want to do.

So basically, except for complementing MLK, which is stating the obvious, I fail to understand what this post is about.

Posted by Koshembos | January 21, 2008 8:51 PM

King looks down, sees Joe Lieberman and weeps.

Posted by steve duncan | January 21, 2008 8:59 PM

Shorter Matt: MLK should have kept his mouth shut and not made trouble.

Posted by soullite | January 21, 2008 9:10 PM

There were people speaking out forcefully against the Iraq war. Not Clinton. Not Bill or Hillary. Not then. Not one year in. Not two years in. Not three years in.

Posted by della Rovere | January 21, 2008 9:21 PM

"Shorter Matt: MLK should have kept his mouth shut and not made trouble."

That's the exact opposite of what he meant.

Posted by mad6798j | January 21, 2008 9:28 PM

On July 2nd 1964 for Civil rights act passed.

On August 7 1964 the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed.

In a little over one month the things which have defined, no the things which became the foundation of all American politics for ensuing 44 years happened.

In the first the necessary accomodation to the principals of America become law. In the second the eagerness to lie in order to gain political cover so ideology in the service of power, and profit, was embraced. The first is still controversial. The second is now second nature.

Posted by rapier | January 21, 2008 9:30 PM

More from the same speech:

It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home, America. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on." I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good will all over America today. I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God."

Posted by Ben | January 21, 2008 9:33 PM

I've never understood this whole "LBJ made a courageous choice" meme. The Democrats held Congress for 30 years after, didn't they? Why think that doing the right thing for LBJ took an unusual amount of courage? (And why think that LBJ, of all people, had it?)

Posted by Thomas | January 21, 2008 10:03 PM

This post is quite right.

Posted by Russell L. Carter | January 21, 2008 10:41 PM

"I've never understood this whole "LBJ made a courageous choice" meme. The Democrats held Congress for 30 years after, didn't they? Why think that doing the right thing for LBJ took an unusual amount of courage?"

I'm guessing because LBJ knew it would split the party and lose the Dems the South for a generation. It would be nice, though, if he hadn't tried to hedge this with Vietnam and instead shoot himself in the foot.

You have to really wonder what America would be like now if two bullets had just missed their targets in 1968 (and one in the 1860's). King, in many ways, was our second Jefferson, updating and expanding what our country means and aspires to mean. It is both amazing and sadly understandable how our country has lacked such a figure since he died.

Posted by Reality Man | January 21, 2008 10:58 PM

Although it's common today for people to speak slightingly about Lyndon Johnson, and Hillary Clinton even took a lot of heat for trying to give LBJ a share of credit for civil rights successes along with Dr. King, anyone familiar with the political history of the Sixties understands that Johnson's unparalleled legislative virtuosity played a crucial role in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It's bizarre to see commenters dividing Kennedy's legacy so that Vietnam belongs to Johnson, while Kennedy gets credit for civil rights. It was exactly the holdovers from Kennedy's cabinet, Rusk and Bundy and MacNamara, who pushed for greater and greater commitment to Vietnam, and Johnson's lack of any sort of military credentials made him vulnerable to the push.

None of the leading Democratic contenders today has any military background, or foreign policy experience beyond junkets and speech-making, and it's worth remembering that the last President who got us out of a war expeditiously was a former general, Dwight Eisenhower. Even before his inauguration, Eisenhower traveled to Korea to begin arrangements for a cease fire, and six months later the shooting stopped. It took Nixon four years longer to accomplish less in Vietnam.

Now the Democratic contenders compete with each other to look "strong on defense," and all of them will be vulnerable to exactly the same pressure by the defense establishment that ruined the legacy of Lyndon Johnson.

Posted by Jacob Freeze | January 22, 2008 2:52 AM

I've never understood this whole "LBJ made a courageous choice" meme. The Democrats held Congress for 30 years after, didn't they? Why think that doing the right thing for LBJ took an unusual amount of courage? (And why think that LBJ, of all people, had it?) -Posted by Thomas |

From the Depression until the Civil Rights act, the only Republican President was the General who led us to victory in Europe. In the first election after the act, a washed up Republican politician won a narrow victory in a racially charged election. State Democratic politicians in the south fought the act, and so continued in congress. The presidential candidate, which Johnson thought he was going to be, lost. Johnson's action was brave, or at least proper, which, for a politician, is often the same.

Posted by Njorl | January 22, 2008 2:31 PM

Furthermore, the only two Democrats elected President since then have been from the South.

One was the first Evangelical to run for President since William Jennings Bryan, a man supported by Billy Graham and who spoke about Jesus as much as Bush does.

The other was, depending on your point of view, a good ole boy or an Ivy Leaguer pretending to be a good ole boy.

However, the indisputable fact is that that man's patron and mentor was one of the main signatures on the Southern Manifesto, and don't you think for a damn minute people in Dixie didn't remember that Bill Fulbright was on the "right" side of Civil Rights.

Posted by Greg | January 22, 2008 5:22 PM