TOW #16 "A Time to Break Silence"

Today being Martin Luther King Day I decided to read one of his speeches. The "I have a dream" speech immediately comes to mind at the thought of Dr. King, but I wanted to read one of his less famous speeches, so I chose an excerpt from "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence". In this speech, Dr. King protests the war in Vietnam and calls on the government and people of the United States to bring an end to it. He begins by explaining why he protests the war. Among his reasons he lists that the expense of the war is detrimental to the attempts to help the poor in the United States, that it forces the poor to fight in Vietnam for rights or privileges that they don't have at home, and above all that the fighting is not on behalf of the Vietnamese people and it is destroying their society. After enumerating the crimes of the war, Dr. King calls on the US government to put an end to the war. He lists five steps to achieving this goal, to show that it can and must be done. He also appeals to the American people and asks them to peacefully protest to pressure the government to end the war. Throughout the speech, Dr. King uses many rhetorical questions. For example, he asks "What do they [the Vietnamese people] 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?" (King par. 19). These questions serve to drive home the points to the audience, to get them to seriously consider the US actions in Vietnam and what should be done about them. They also question the motives and morality of the US government, and call for change. Ultimately, they help Dr. King connect to the thoughts of the audience and to call them to help bring an end to the war.

Here is where I found the excerpt of the speech: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm