○  名人演讲： a time to break silence  ○

*as we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation's role in vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. i am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, morehouse college, and i recommend it to all who find the american course in vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. moreover, i would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors.* these are the times for real choices and not false ones. we are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in vietnam. i say we must enter that struggle, but i wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.

the war in vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the american spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. they will be concerned about guatemala and peru. they will be concerned about thailand and cambodia. they will be concerned about mozambique and south africa. we will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in american life and policy.

and so, such thoughts take us beyond vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living god.

in 1957, a sensitive american official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. during

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