Part of a letter

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

Guess Who?

26 comments

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  1. Guess why.

  2. How are you?

    What are your plans for Christmas? I would say you are serving up some roasted white moderates.

    Any chance your will throw up something cheery for me on Christmas Eve? Since I will be working most of next week. Don’t forget all the hard working cops, firemen, and nursese who are working over the holidays folks.

  3. Because understanding our denied, repressed, unconscious contents is the way forward, is the way to survival!

    • pfiore8 on December 19, 2008 at 08:49

    another pragmatic soul, huh? (7+ / 0-)

    it isn’t the republicans. they aren’t the problem. because i can recognize those pricks. and they’re right out there, advertising their poison.

    but people who allow this bullshit to go on… who always clamor about how we have to put up with crap… or hey, it’s enough, we have a dem in the white house. well. guess what, mikeymike68. IT ISN’T EVEN IN THE VICINITY OF GOOD ENOUGH.

    and the power brokers count on you and all the other establishment, conventional thinkers like you to snore at Monsanto and alll the other creeps. you’re the line between me and them. you.

    and anyone else who thinks this is about more and better democrats. or only democrats who can raise primary money.

    i am tired of the sell outs. this isn’t about democrats. it is about human beings. it is about all of us.

    good god. really. tired. of. it.

    my rant to a guy at dKos the other day . . .  

    • Edger on December 19, 2008 at 09:59

    if moderates were moderate with the breadth, width and depth of excuses they come up with, and weren’t so goddamn “nice”.

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