{"id":217125,"date":"2016-01-18T16:38:23","date_gmt":"2016-01-18T16:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/mlks-warning-of-americas-spiritual-death\/"},"modified":"2016-01-18T16:38:23","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T16:38:23","slug":"mlks-warning-of-americas-spiritual-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/mlks-warning-of-americas-spiritual-death\/","title":{"rendered":"MLK\u2019s Warning of America\u2019s Spiritual Death"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"317.5\">\n<p><strong>From the Archive:<\/strong> A year before his death, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. broke with many political allies by warning that the Vietnam War was\u00a0inflicting a \u201cspiritual death\u201d on America, casting\u00a0King outside mainstream opinion circles which called his advice na\u00c3\u00afve and irresponsible, as Gary G. Kohls recalled in 2014.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-16964\"\/>By Gary G. Kohls (Originally published on Jan. 19, 2014)<\/p>\n<p>Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s Riverside Church speech was titled \u201cBeyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.\u201d It was delivered exactly one year before his April, 4, 1968 assassination in Memphis.\u00a0In the speech, King declared, \u201cA nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The people who heard that speech recognized it as one of the most powerful speeches ever given articulating the immorality of the Vietnam War and its destructive impact on social progress in the United States. In explaining his decision to follow his conscience and speak out against U.S. militarism, King said:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_9829\" style=\"width: 234px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" readability=\"33\"><a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/king-statue.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9829\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9829\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif?82332e\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/king-statue.jpg\" alt=\"Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington, DC.\" width=\"224\" height=\"300\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9829\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/king-statue.jpg\" alt=\"Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington, DC.\" width=\"224\" height=\"300\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cI knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But King went farther, diagnosing the broader disease of militarism and violence that was endangering the soul of the United States. King said, \u201cI 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 \u2013 my own government.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Poisoning America\u2019s Soul<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>King knew very well that the disease of violence was killing off more than social progress in America. Violence was sickening the nation\u2019s soul as well. He added \u201cIf America\u2019s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read \u2018Vietnam\u2019.\u201d\u00a0King urged his fellow citizens to take up the causes of the world\u2019s oppressed, rather than taking the side of the&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2016\/01\/18\/mlks-warning-of-americas-spiritual-death-2\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Archive: A year before his death, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. broke with many political allies by warning that the Vietnam War was\u00a0inflicting a \u201cspiritual death\u201d on America, casting\u00a0King outside mainstream opinion circles which called his advice na\u00c3\u00afve and irresponsible, as Gary G. Kohls recalled in 2014. By Gary G. Kohls (Originally published [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-217125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}