The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking.

The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?"

http://www.drmartinlutherkingjr.com/wherewearegoing.htm


Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

Martin Luther King, Jr., speech, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967

When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes andregulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civil services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not makethem, any more than a prisoner makes a prison.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.


The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness--justice.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


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 in 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 an American to the
leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.


A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of
futility.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.


Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge,
aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden, December 11, 1964.


Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience. And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating
another's flesh.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait, 1963.


The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


[I]t is necessary to understand that Black Power is a cry of disappointment. The Black Power slogan did not spring full grown from the head of some philosophical Zeus. It was born from the wounds of despair and disappointment. It is a cry of daily hurt
and persistent pain.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

Martin Luther King, Jr., speech, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.


When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and
regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civil services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not make
them, any more than a prisoner makes a prison.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Wall Street Journal, November 13, 1962.


Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false
and the false with the true.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength To Love, 1963.


I am aware that there are many who wince at a distinction between property and persons--who hold both sacrosanct. My views are not so rigid. A life is sacred. Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and
respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on; it is not man.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.


The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.


The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must
be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an
irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963.


Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


The Negroes of America had taken the President, the press and the pulpit at their word when they spoke in broad terms of freedom and justice. But the absence of brutality and unregenerate evil is not the presence of justice. To stay murder is not the same thing as to ordain brotherhood.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that
would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness--justice.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road
of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Measures of Man, 1959.


A good many observers have remarked that if equality could come at once the Negro would not be ready for it. I submit that the white American is even more unprepared.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.


Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having your legs cut off, and then being condemned for being a cripple. It means seeing your mother and father spiritually murdered by the slings and arrows of daily exploitation, and then being hated for being an orphan.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and
regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions of civil services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them, but they do not make
them, any more than a prisoner makes a prison.

Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience, 1967.

Who is Mr. McCain's spiritual mentor/advisor, Violet? I missed this, I guess. I didn't know McCain had one. Endorsements, yes. All of these professional politicians seem to have nefarious endorsements, but who has McCain been mentored and advised by for the last twenty years who comparatively speaking is obviously half nuts, racist, who passionately hates white America? Do grace us with a name, please.

I think you get my point. Receiving an endorsement from a nutcase is definitely not the same as taking counsel from and being best friends with a radical element who hates white Americans. Barack Obama glows less and less brightly as time wears on. By the time the November election comes around, his mask will have slipped enough that only the truly naive and the gullible will still be believers.

I have every right as a citizen of this country to demand and insist upon an examination of a presidential candidate's religious background when that background may or may not be connected to a radical element that we are currently at war with. I have the right to know this information, Violet, whether you approve or not. This does not make me a racist. If you think it does, you are sadly mistaken but I am not going to continue to belabor your erroneous perception of this fact anymore.

I understand you are angry and I know you're upset. Barack Obama and Rev. Wright have the free speech ammendment rights and privileges to speak out about anything they want to in this nation. Our wonderful military brought them that right. That right, however, does not mean that either are the appropriate people to move into the White House and begin to run this great nation.

I have some basic concerns in this ongoing debate over who will become the most powerful person in the free world. I want that person to be well tutored, non-racist, caring for all races and interested in the betterment of all equally, very well experienced, with sound judgment, capable of protecting us if it becomes necessary in terms of the military, but not someone who desires or is regularly in favor of war as a first solution. I would prefer this person also have sound morals and be somewhat traditional (religiously speaking) because that is what I personally relate and ascribe to, and it is my right to desire this.

I see Barack Obama as a wonderful idealist who is capable of some of the above, but certainly not all. As I've said countless times before, there are too many questions marks surrounding his judgment and experience. This latest drama with his pastor shows me that his judgment is definitely in question and only affirms my doubts in his ability to lead this nation well.

That right, however, does not mean that either are the appropriate people to move into the White House and begin to run this great nation.

n 2005, Haggard was listed by Time magazine as one of the top 25 most influential evangelicals in America. Haggard is a firm supporter of President George W. Bush, and is sometimes credited with rallying evangelicals behind Bush during the 2004 election.Author Jeff Sharlet reported in 2005 that Haggard "talks to… Bush or his advisers every Monday" and stated at that time that "no pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism." In a June 2005 Wall Street Journal article, "Ted Haggard, the head of the 30-million strong National Association of Evangelicals, joked that the only disagreement between himself and the leader of the Western world is automotive: Mr. Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas he prefers a Chevy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Haggard

Jun 21, 2004 | You probably imagine your congressman hard at work in the Capitol debating legislation, making laws -- you know, governing. But your newspaper probably didn't tell you that one night in March, members of Congress hosted a crowning ritual for an ex-convict and multibillionaire who dressed up in maroon robes and declared himself the Second Coming.

On March 23, the Dirksen Senate Office Building was the scene of a coronation ceremony for Rev. Sun Myung Moon, owner of the conservative Washington Times newspaper and UPI wire service, who was given a bejeweled crown by Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill. Afterward, Moon told his bipartisan audience of Washington power players he would save everyone on Earth as he had saved the souls of Hitler and Stalin -- the murderous dictators had been born again through him, he said. In a vision, Moon said the reformed Hitler and Stalin vouched for him, calling him "none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."

A flier for the event claimed an impressive who's-who of organizers, including Republicans Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland and Charlie Black, a top Republican strategist. Democrats were named, too, like Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee, who, incidentally, claims to have not even heard of the event.

http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/06/21/moon/index.html

Members of Congress assisting at the event included Sen. Mark Dayton, Minnesota Democrat, Reps. Roscoe G. Bartlett of Maryland, Christopher B. Cannon of Utah and Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, all Republicans, and Democratic Reps. Danny K. Davis of Illinois, Harold E Ford Jr. of Tennessee and Sanford D. Bishop Jr. of Georgia."

http://www.politics1.com/blog-0604a.htm#crown2

Who is Mr. McCain's spiritual mentor/advisor, Violet? I missed this, I guess. I didn't know McCain had one.

On February 26, McCain appeared at a campaign rally in Cincinnati with the Reverend Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, a supersize Pentecostal institution that features a 5,200-seat sanctuary, a television studio (where Parsley tapes a weekly show), and a 122,000-square-foot Ministry Activity Center. That day, a week before the Ohio primary, Parsley praised the Republican presidential front-runner as a "strong, true, consistent conservative." The endorsement was important for McCain, who at the time was trying to put an end to the lingering challenge from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a favorite among Christian evangelicals. A politically influential figure in Ohio, Parsley could also play a key role in McCain's effort to win this bellwether state in the general election. McCain, with Parsley by his side at the Cincinnati rally, called the evangelical minister a "spiritual guide." http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/03/john-mccain-rod-parsley-spiritual-guide.html

You are right, it's not 1967 anymore....

I saw a side of America in the POF forums that shocked me.

Really out there? And when have I ever said you didn't have the right to question his background? What makes you a racist are the remarks you've strewn about in several of the political threads alluding to Barack's heritage (or lack of, as he has stated MANY times), as well as the color of his skin. I'm not the only person on this forum to make comments on your views on this.

And let's not forget, Obama is half white. How racist can he really be? Most multicultural people are the most tolerant people you'll ever meet.

so how can you use Obamas being biracial to excuse his beliefs?

I am willing to bet that most of his other choices for a church would have the same message being delivered if not moreso.

What can be worse than a Pastor shouting out that America should be blown off the face of the world?

It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day... Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come.... it rises from the judgment of God upon his rebellious chosen people.

On the September 18, 2006, edition of National Public Radio's Fresh Air, Hagee stated that Hurricane Katrina was an act of God, punishing New Orleans for "a level of sin that was offensive to God". He specifically referred to a "homosexual parade" that was held on the date the hurricane struck and that this was proof "of the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans" [1] , even though the Southern Decadence parade was scheduled for the following week and the primary gay neighborhoods, the French Quarter and the Marigny, were spared the flooding and destruction. Another reason for God's wrath, Hagee claims, was the Bush administration's pressure on Israel to abandon settlements and the land associated with them. Therefore, God took American land in a tit for tat exchange during Hurricane Katrina

The bombs in Vietnam explode at home; they destroy the hopes and possibilities for a decent America.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967.

"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and the black South Africans, and now we are indignant. Because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back into our own front yard. America's chickens are coming home to roost.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright

I have every right as a citizen of this country to demand and insist upon an examination of a presidential candidate's religious background when that background may or may not be connected to a radical element that we are currently at war with. I have the right to know this information, Violet, whether you approve or not. This does not make me a racist. If you think it does, you are sadly mistaken but I am not going to continue to belabor your erroneous perception of this fact anymore.

Your generalization of hate spewing Southside of Chicago's churches is what's wrong. I'm sure there are churches in that area that preach the "word of God" and not politics.

Again, Violet, whenever any individual questions Barack Obama's documented Muslim heritage, you and some of the others scream "Racist! Racist!" And that's fine. You just keep right on trying to deflect from the reality of whatever we cite, which is reputable and researched, and what is now on this Utube for all to witness.

But for you to have the audacity to claim that I am prejudiced over the color of Senator Obama's skin goes too far and I take offense to it. You cannot find a quote where I state I am prejudiced against African American people because I am not and have made no such remarks ever. Now I cannot control how you choose to interpret my words and I'm not going to bother to defend myself again over your obsessive need to call me a racist, so say what you will in the future and if it breaks the POF rules I'll promptly report you. Again, I believe you do this only to deflect from the obvious, which is that your candidate is fading fast and is being revealed for the person he really is. His judgment is unsound and his ties to those who could harm are palpable.

Barack Obama has been taught to be racist for the last twenty years as he sat under the tutelage of a man he considers a family member, Rev. Wright. The man baptized his children, married he and his wife, and Barack heard sermon after sermon of what is on that UTube. Barack denies this, claiming he was unaware that his pastor is racist and was capable of saying "God D-mn America!" along with the rest of the tripe he spouted, etc...

Senator Barack Obama is a liar and I believe this too will come out soon enough. It won't matter to you though, or to those who are so caught up in the groupie-like frenzy of wanting to believe in this guy no matter what. You all must have your hero, even at a potential tremendous cost to our nation.