Monday, January 20, 2020

Lessons of our Time From Martin Luther King

On this day of celebration of the legacy of Martin Luther King, it's seems to me that GOP Senators could take a lesson from a sermon MLK gave just days before his death.  Entitled, "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution", the sermon was given at the Washington National Cathedral.  In part:
The hour has come for everybody, for all institutions of the public sector and the private sector to work to get rid of racism. And now if we are to do it we must honestly admit certain things and get rid of certain myths that have constantly been disseminated all over our nation.

One is the myth of time. It is the notion that only time can solve the problem of racial injustice. And there are those who often sincerely say to the Negro and his allies in the white community, "Why don’t you slow up? Stop pushing things so fast. Only time can solve the problem. And if you will just be nice and patient and continue to pray, in a hundred or two hundred years the problem will work itself out."

There is an answer to that myth. It is that time is neutral. It can be used wither constructively or destructively. And I am sorry to say this morning that I am absolutely convinced that the forces of ill will in our nation, the extreme rightists of our nation—the people on the wrong side—have used time much more effectively than the forces of goodwill. And it may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time."
Think again how Trump continues to wreak havoc on this nation through the "appalling silence and indifference of good people who sit around and say "Wait on time."

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