A muscular peace
Our world needs, now more than ever, a strong and enduring peace linked to a powerful sense of justice. There is a macho notion that war and fighting is manly, and that peace and diplomacy is soft and not really masculine. Years ago, in an amazing speech about the Vietnam war that is still very contemporary forty years later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. issued a strong call:
“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’m not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh… 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. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.”
The full text of Dr. King’s speech is a relevant today as it was on April 4, 1967.
