Dr. Martin Luther King's Prophetic Words Still Resonate 42 Years After His Assassination
“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.
April 4, 1967
(The speech was titled 'Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.' It was delivered exactly one year to the day before his assassination on April 4, 1968 in Memphis. The people who heard that speech recognized it as one of the most powerful speeches ever given articulating the immorality of the Vietnam War and its destructive impact on social progress in the United States.
Consortium News
The U.S. will spend $782 billion on the military in fiscal 2009. It spent $678 billion on social security and $676 billion on medical.
Add to this the money spent on social assistance by states and cities, and the U.S. government spends far more on social programs than on the military. What's more, the military budget is in the process of plummetting, the social budget soaring.
MLK got his wish.
Posted by
rabbit |
7:27 pm, April 04, 2010
Not quite. You didn't include the cost of the National Guard .. and I think that combined, Iraq and Afghanistan are more than 782 Billion.
Posted by
leftdog |
8:28 pm, April 04, 2010
Look at it this way that when it came to Afghanistan and Iraq invasion both Dems and Repugs supported it. Now healthcare reform? You know rest of the story. Cost of these two wars well over one trillion and unpaid for. It was added to the deficit.
Healthcare reform will actually reduce deficit in the long term. Go figure.
Posted by
LeDaro |
7:34 am, April 05, 2010