美国历史上最经典演讲Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence

第一篇：美国历史上最经典演讲Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence

Martin Luther King, Jr.Beyond Vietnam--A Time to Break Silence

Delivered 4 April 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City Mr.Chairman, ladies and gentlemen:

I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers.I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr.Bennett, Dr.Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, and some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation.And of course it¡¯s always good to come back to Riverside Church.Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit.I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice.I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam.The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one.Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war.Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world.Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty;but we must move on.And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history.Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us.If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path.At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: “Why are you speaking about the war, Dr.King?” “Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” “Peace and civil rights don't mix,” they say.“Aren't you hurting the cause of your people,” they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling.Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church--the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate--leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation.This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front.It is not addressed to China or to Russia.Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam.Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem.While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellow Americans.Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision.There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America.A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle.It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor--both black and white--through the poverty program.There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings.Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I 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.Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home.It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools.And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago.I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years--especially the last three summers.As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems.I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action.But they ask--and rightly so--what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted.Their questions hit home, and I knew that I 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--my own government.For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.For those who ask the question, “Aren't you a civil rights leader?” and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer.In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: “To save the soul of America.” We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear.In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath--America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam.It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 19541;and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission--a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for “the brotherhood of man.” This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ.To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war.Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men--for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God.Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions.We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula.I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now.I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.They must see Americans as strange liberators.The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1954--in 1945 rather--after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China.They were led by Ho Chi Minh.Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them.Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long.With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China--for whom the Vietnamese have no great love--but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists.For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence.For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam.Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs.Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not.We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will.Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement.But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem.The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North.The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States' influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused.When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support.All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform.Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy.They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met.They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.So they go, primarily women and children and the aged.They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops.They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees.They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury.So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children.They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals.They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food.They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village.We have destroyed their land and their crops.We have cooperated in the crushing of--in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church.We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon.We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness.Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call “fortified hamlets.” The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these.Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise.These, too, are our brothers.Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies.What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call “VC” or “communists”? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of “aggression from the North” as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions.Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence.Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta.And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants.They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded.Their questions are frighteningly relevant.Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves.For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.So, too, with Hanoi.In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust.To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now.In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies.It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva.After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops.They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made.Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North.He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy.Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than eight hundred--rather, eight thousand miles away from its shores.At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called “enemy,” I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else.For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy.We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved.Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.Somehow this madness must cease.We must stop now.I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam.I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted.I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam.I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken.I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours;the initiative to stop it must be ours.This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam.Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct.The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies.It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat.The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism(unquote).If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam.If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play.The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve.It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people.The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.Five: Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.Part of our ongoing--Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front.Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done.We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary.Meanwhile--Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment.We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam.We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.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 the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S.military advisors in Venezuela.This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala.It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F.Kennedy come back to haunt us.Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values.We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.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 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 South 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 hand 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 the veins of peoples 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.This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism.War is not the answer.Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons.Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations.These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness.We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice.We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.These are revolutionary times.All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born.The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before.The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.We in the West must support these revolutions.It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries.This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit.Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated.Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional.Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind.This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man.When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response.I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh.I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life.Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God.And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God.He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.” “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation.The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate.And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.As Arnold Toynbee says: “Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil.Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word”(unquote).We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today.We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late.Procrastination is still the thief of time.Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity.The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood--it ebbs.We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on.Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect.Omar Khayyam is right: “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.” We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation.We must move past indecision to action.We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors.If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.Now let us begin.Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response.Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message--of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide，In the strife of Truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight，And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong

Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace.If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

第二篇：美国历史上最经典演讲Elizabeth Glaser

Elizabeth Glaser

1992 Democratic National Convention Address

delivered 14 July 1992, New York, NY

I'm Elizabeth Glaser.Eleven years ago, while giving birth to my first child, I hemorrhaged and was transfused with seven pints of blood.Four years later, I found out that I had been infected with the AIDS virus and had unknowingly passed it to my daughter, Ariel, through my breast milk, and my son, Jake, in utero.Twenty years ago I wanted to be at the Democratic Convention because it was a way to participate in my country.Today, I am here because it's a matter of life and death.Exactly--Exactly four years ago my daughter died of AIDS.She did not survive the Reagan Administration.I am here because my son and I may not survive four more years of leaders who say they care, but do nothing.I--I am in a race with the clock.This is not about being a Republican or an Independent or a Democrat.It's about the future--for each and every one of us.I started out just a mom--fighting for the life of her child.But along the way I learned how unfair America can be today, not just for people who have HIV, but for many, many people--poor people, gay people, people of color, children.A strange spokesperson for such a group: a well-to-do white woman.But I have learned my lesson the hard way, and I know that America has lost her path and is at risk of losing her soul.America wake up: We are all in a struggle between life and death.I understand--I understand the sense of frustration and despair in our country, because I know firsthand about shouting for help and getting no answer.I went to Washington to tell Presidents Reagan and Bush that much, much more had to be done for AIDS research and care, and that children couldn't be forgotten.The first time, when nothing happened, I thought, “They just didn't hear me.” The second time, when nothing happened, I thought, “Maybe I didn't shout loud enough.” But now I realize they don't hear because they don't want to listen.When you cry for help and no one listens, you start to lose your hope.I began to lose faith in America.I felt my country was letting me down--and it was.This is not the America I was raised to be proud of.I was raised to believe that other's problems were my problems as well.But when I tell most people about HIV, in hopes that they will help and care, I see the look in their eyes: “It's not my problem,” they're thinking.Well, it's everyone's problem and we need a leader who will tell us that.We need a visionary to guide us--to say it wasn't all right for Ryan White to be banned from school because he had AIDS, to say it wasn't alright for a man or a woman to be denied a job because they're infected with this virus.We need a leader who is truly committed to educating us.I believe in America, but not with a leadership of selfishness and greed--where the wealthy get health care and insurance and the poor don't.Do you know--Do you know how much my AIDS care costs? Over 40,000 dollars a year.Someone without insurance can't afford this.Even the drugs that I hope will keep me alive are out of reach for others.Is their life any less valuable? Of course not.This is not the America I was raised to be proud of--where rich people get care and drugs that poor people can't.We need health care for all.We need a leader who will say this and do something about it.I believe in America, but not a leadership that talks about problems but is incapable of solving them--two HIV commission reports with recommendations about what to do to solve this crisis sitting on shelves, gathering dust.We need a leader who will not only listen to these recommendations, but implement them.I believe in America, but not with a leadership that doesn't hold government accountable.I go to Washington to the National Institutes of Health and say, “Show me what you're doing on HIV.” They hate it when I come because I try to tell them how to do it better.But that's why I love being a taxpayer, because it's my money and they must feel accountable.I believe in an America where our leaders talk straight.When anyone tells President Bush that the battle against AIDS is seriously under-funded, he juggles the numbers to mislead the public into thinking we're spending twice as much as we really are.While they play games with numbers, people are dying.I believe in America, but an America where there is a light in every home.A thousand points of light just wasn't enough: My house has been dark for too long.Once every generation, history brings us to an important crossroads.Sometimes in life there is that moment when it's possible to make a change for the better.This is one of those moments.For me, this is not politics.This is a crisis of caring.In this hall is the future--women, men of all colors saying, “Take America back.” We are--We are just real people wanting a more hopeful life.But words and ideas are not enough.Good thoughts won't save my family.What's the point of caring if we don't do something about it? A President and a Congress that can work together so we can get out of this gridlock and move ahead, because I don't win my war if the President cares and the Congress, or if the Congress cares and the President doesn't support the ideas.The people in this hall this week, the Democratic Party, all of us can begin to deliver that partnership, and in November we can all bring it home.My daughter lived seven years, and in her last y

第三篇：美国历史上最经典演讲John F. Kennedy

John F.Kennedy

Ich bin ein Berliner(“I am a 'Berliner'”)

delivered 26 June 1963, West Berlin

I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, who has symbolized throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin.And I am proud--And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished Chancellor who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who--

--who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed.Two thousand years ago--Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was “civis Romanus sum.”1 Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner.”(I appreciate my interpreter translating my German.)

There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world.Let them come to Berlin.There are some who say--There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future.Let them come to Berlin.And there are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists.Let them come to Berlin.And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress.Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen.Let them come to Berlin.Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect.But we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in--to prevent them from leaving us.I want to say on behalf of my countrymen who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride, that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance, the story of the last 18 years.I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope, and the determination of the city of West Berlin.While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system--for all the world to see--we take no satisfaction in it;for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.What is--What is true of this city is true of Germany: Real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice.In 18 years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with good will to all people.You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main.So let me ask you, as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.When all are free, then we look--can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe.When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.All--All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin.And, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

第四篇：美国历史上最经典演讲 Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

First Fireside Chat

“The Banking Crisis”

My friends:

I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking--to talk with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking, but more particularly with the overwhelming majority of you who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks.I want to tell you what has been done in the last few days, and why it was done, and what the next steps are going to be.I recognize that the many proclamations from State capitols and from Washington, the legislation, the Treasury regulations, and so forth, couched for the most part in banking and legal terms, ought to be explained for the benefit of the average citizen.I owe this, in particular, because of the fortitude and the good temper with which everybody has accepted the inconvenience and hardships of the banking holiday.And I know that when you understand what we in Washington have been about, I shall continue to have your cooperation as fully as I have had your sympathy and your help during the past week.First of all, let me state the simple fact that when you deposit money in a bank, the bank does not put the money into a safe deposit vault.It invests your money in many different forms of credit--in bonds, in commercial paper, in mortgages and in many other kinds of loans.In other words, the bank puts your money to work to keep the wheels of industry and of agriculture turning around.A comparatively small part of the money that you put into the bank is kept in currency--an amount which in normal times is wholly sufficient to cover the cash needs of the average citizen.In other words, the total amount of all the currency in the country is only a comparatively small proportion of the total deposits in all the banks of the country.What, then, happened during the last few days of February and the first few days of March? Because of undermined confidence on the part of the public, there was a general rush by a large portion of our population to turn bank deposits into currency or gold--a rush so great that

the soundest banks couldn't get enough currency to meet the demand.The reason for this was that on the spur of the moment it was, of course, impossible to sell perfectly sound assets of a bank and convert them into cash, except at panic prices far below their real value.By the afternoon of March third, a week ago last Friday, scarcely a bank in the country was open to do business.Proclamations closing them, in whole or in part, had been issued by the Governors in almost all the states.It was then that I issued the proclamation providing for the national bank holiday, and this was the first step in the Government¡¯s reconstruction of our financial and economic fabric.The second step, last Thursday, was the legislation promptly and patriotically passed by the Congress confirming my proclamation and broadening my powers so that it became possible in view of the requirement of time to extend the holiday and lift the ban of that holiday gradually in the days to come.This law also gave authority to develop a program of rehabilitation of our banking facilities.And I want to tell our citizens in every part of the Nation that the national Congress--Republicans and Democrats alike--showed by this action a devotion to public welfare and a realization of the emergency and the necessity for speed that it is difficult to match in all our history.The third stage has been the series of regulations permitting the banks to continue their functions to take care of the distribution of food and household necessities and the payment of payrolls.This bank holiday, while resulting in many cases in great inconvenience, is affording us the opportunity to supply the currency necessary to meet the situation.Remember that no sound bank is a dollar worse off than it was when it closed its doors last week.Neither is any bank which may turn out not to be in a position for immediate opening.The new law allows the twelve Federal Reserve Banks to issue additional currency on good assets and thus the banks that reopen will be able to meet every legitimate call.The new currency is being sent out by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in large volume to every part of the country.It is sound currency because it is backed by actual, good assets.Another question you will ask is this: Why are all the banks not to be reopened at the same time? The answer is simple and I know you will understand it: Your Government does not intend that the history of the past few years shall be repeated.We do not want and will not have another epidemic of bank failures.As a result, we start tomorrow, Monday, with the opening of banks in the twelve Federal Reserve Bank cities--those banks, which on first examination by the Treasury, have already been found to be all right.That will be followed on Tuesday by the resumption of all other functions by banks already found to be sound in cities where there are recognized clearing houses.That means about two hundred and fifty cities of the United States.In other words, we are moving as fast as the mechanics of the situation will allow us.On Wednesday and succeeding days, banks in smaller places all through the country will resume business, subject, of course, to the Government's physical ability to complete its survey It is necessary that the reopening of banks be extended over a period in order to permit the banks to make applications for the necessary loans, to obtain currency needed to meet their requirements, and to enable the Government to make common sense checkups.Please let me make it clear to you that if your bank does not open the first day you are by no means justified in believing that it will not open.A bank that opens on one of the subsequent days is in exactly the same status as the bank that opens tomorrow.I know that many people are worrying about State banks that are not members of the Federal Reserve System.There is no occasion for that worry.These banks can and will receive assistance from member banks and from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.And, of course, they are under the immediate control of the State banking authorities.These State banks are following the same course as the National banks except that they get their licenses to resume business from the State authorities, and these authorities have been asked by the Secretary of the Treasury to permit their good banks to open up on the same schedule as the national banks.And so I am confident that the State Banking Departments will be as careful as the national Government in the policy relating to the opening of banks and will follow the same broad theory.It is possible that when the banks resume a very few people who have not recovered from their fear may again begin withdrawals.Let me make it clear to you that the banks will take care of all needs, except, of course, the hysterical demands of hoarders, and it is my belief that hoarding during the past week has become an exceedingly unfashionable pastime in every part of our nation.It needs no prophet to tell you that when the people find that they can get their money--that they can get it when they want it for all legitimate purposes--the phantom of fear will soon be laid.People will again be glad to have their money

where it will be safely taken care of and where they can use it conveniently at any time.I can assure you, my friends, that it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than it is to keep it under the mattress.The success of our whole national program depends, of course, on the cooperation of the public--on its intelligent support and its use of a reliable system.Remember that the essential accomplishment of the new legislation is that it makes it possible for banks more readily to convert their assets into cash than was the case before.More liberal provision has been made for banks to borrow on these assets at the Reserve Banks and more liberal provision has also been made for issuing currency on the security of these good assets.This currency is not fiat currency.It is issued only on adequate security, and every good bank has an abundance of such security.One more point before I close.There will be, of course, some banks unable to reopen without being reorganized.The new law allows the Government to assist in making these reorganizations quickly and effectively and even allows the Government to subscribe to at least a part of any new capital that may be required.I hope you can see, my friends, from this essential recital of what your Government is doing that there is nothing complex, nothing radical in the process.We have had a bad banking situation.Some of our bankers had shown themselves either incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the people¡¯s funds.They had used the money entrusted to them in speculations and unwise loans.This was, of course, not true in the vast majority of our banks, but it was true in enough of them to shock the people of the United States, for a time, into a sense of insecurity and to put them into a frame of mind where they did not differentiate, but seemed to assume that the acts of a comparative few had tainted them all.And so it became the Government¡¯s job to straighten out this situation and do it as quickly as possible.And that job is being performed.I do not promise you that every bank will be reopened or that individual losses will not be suffered, but there will be no losses that possibly could be avoided;and there would have been more and greater losses had we continued to drift.I can even promise you salvation for some,at least, of the sorely presses banks.We shall be engaged not merely in reopening sound banks but in the creation of more sound banks through reorganization.It has been wonderful to me to catch the note of confidence from all over the country.I can never be sufficiently grateful to the people for the loyal support that they have given me in their acceptance of the judgment that has dictated our course, even though all our processes may not have seemed clear to them.After all, there is an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people themselves.Confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan.You people must have faith;you must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses.Let us unite in banishing fear.We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system, and it is up to you to support and make it work.It is your problem, my friends, your problem no less than it is mine.Together we cannot fail.

第五篇：美国历史上最经典演讲 A LEFT-HANDED COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS

A LEFT-HANDED COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS

(1983)

I want to thank the Mills College Class of '83 for offering me a rare chance: to speak aloud in public in the language of women.I know there are men graduating, and I don't mean to exclude them, far from it.There is a Greek tragedy where the Greek says to the foreigner, “If you don't understand Greek, please signify by nodding.” Anyhow, commencements are usually operated under the unspoken agreement that everybody graduating is either male or ought to be.That's why we are all wearing these twelfth-century dresses that look so great on men and make women look either like a mushroom or a pregnant stork.Intellectual tradition is male.Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language;and the language of our tribe is the men's language.Of course women learn it.We're not dumb.If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how.This is a man's world, so it talks a man's language.The words are all words of power.You've come a long way, baby, but no way is long enough.You can't even get there by selling yourself out: because there is theirs, not yours.Maybe we've had enough words of power and talk about the battle of life.Maybe we need some words of weakness.Instead of saying now that I hope you will all go forth from this ivory tower of college into the Real World and forge a triumphant career or at least help your husband to and keep our country strong and be a success in everythingas I know you already havethat's their game.Not against men, eitherthe valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life.All that the Warrior denies and refuses is left to us and the men who share it with us and therefore, like us, can't play doctor, only nurse, can't be warriors, only civilians, can't be chiefs, only indians.Well so that is our country.The night side of our country.If there is a day side to it, high sierras, prairies of bright grass, we only know pioneers' tales about it, we haven't got there yet.We're never going to get there by imitating Machoman.We are only going to get there by going our own way, by living there, by living through the night in our own country.So what I hope for you is that you live there not as prisoners, ashamed of being women, consenting captives of a psychopathic social system, but as natives.That you will be at home there, keep house there, be your own mistress, with a room of your own.That you will do your work there, whatever you're good at, art or science or tech or running a company or sweeping under the beds, and when they tell you that it's second-class work because a woman is doing it, I hope you tell them to go to hell and while they're going to give you equal pay for equal time.I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated.I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people.And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your

country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is.Our roots are in the dark;the earth is our country.Why did we look up for blessing-instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there.Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon.Not from above, but from below.Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourished, where human beings grow human souls.