Dear Source:
I am so pleased that you published "King Saw Through the Rhetoric of War." Few wish to remember the last three years of Dr. King's life, when he broke through the narrow prism of civil rights to the larger arena of human rights, economic, justice, and the interrelatedness of these struggles around the world.
What he saw happening to the USA if it did not change the arrogant and selfish values he described has happened, and continues to happen, since the USA has not changed those values, which encourage "the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism".
The USA is now involved in a war at least as egregious as that of Vietnam, and even more destructive of any moral stature the nation had left. Dr. King's words in that speech at the Riverside Church resonate in the current circumstances, especially his call for those who have chosen to exercise moral leadership to speak out on the basis of the core of virtually all world religions – "that overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole", the "all-embracing and unconditional love for all men," which is "the key which unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality" whether recognized as God, Allah, Jehovah, the Transcendent Absolute or the eternal life force itself.
Judith L. Bourne
St. Thomas
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