"A time comes when silence is betrayal."
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, By Rev. Martin Luther King, 4 April 1967
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, By Rev. Martin Luther King, 4 April 1967
Words as true today as when Dr. King uttered them. In the 41 years, we have made progress on many things, but the empire and its wars still drain our budgets and inflict pain on our people.
The Empire continues to win as people are impovrished. This has been true under both Republican or Democratic Presidents, Republican or Democratic Congresses. Case in point: the debt deal.
McClatchy is reporting that the Pentagon is a winner in the debt deal:
The last-minute deal that Congress is considering to raise the federal debt limit probably will mean trillions of dollars in government spending reductions for most agencies. But one department stands to gain: the Pentagon.
snip
Military spending has more or less survived the drawdown of two wars and a domestic economic crisis. Even now, Congress can't agree on how much to cut defense spending while maintaining U.S. military strength.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...
But how can this be?
Rather than cutting $400 billion in defense spending through 2023, as President Barack Obama had proposed in April, the current debt proposal trims $350 billion through 2024, effectively giving the Pentagon $50 billion more than it had been expecting over the next decade.
With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, experts said, the overall change in defense spending practices could be minimal: Instead of cuts, the Pentagon merely could face slower growth.
"This is a good deal for defense when you probe under the numbers," said Lawrence Korb, a defense expert at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning research center. "It's better than what the Defense Department was expecting."
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...
The new trigger requires war spending to decrease by $600B over 10 years (a paltry 60B per year out of over a trillion) if Congress does not decide how to screw working people, the disabled, the elderly, the poor, etc., and to cut taxes for the wealthy through "tax reform". Those who have the least will be sacrified for those who have the most. And some will call it "victory."
A few will protest:
As Christians, we believe the moral measure of the debate is how the most poor and vulnerable people fare. We look at every budget proposal from the bottom up—how it treats those Jesus called "the least of these" (Matthew 25:45). They do not have powerful lobbies, but they have the most compelling claim on our consciences and common resources. The Christian community has an obligation to help them be heard, to join with others to insist that programs that serve the most vulnerable in our nation and around the world are protected. We know from our experience serving hungry and homeless people that these programs meet basic human needs and protect the lives and dignity of the most vulnerable. We believe that God is calling us to pray, fast, give alms, and to speak out for justice.
http://www.circleofprotection.us/
But "pragmatists" will drown out the voices of prophets.
Empire will survive, if not grow, wars will continue in our name, working people will get screwed, the poor will feel the brunt of the pain, and the Reagan Revolution will continue unabated.
Silence is betraying all those who suffer.
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
Thomas Jefferson
http://brainyquote.com/...
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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 is not haphazard and superficial. 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 Latin 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 hands 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 veins of people 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.
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, By Rev. Martin Luther King, 4 April 1967
Robert F. Kennedy:
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/...
We start by ending our silence.