Friday, January 16, 2009

Peaceful Ends And Means

Martin Luther King, Jr. with President Lyndon JohnsonAnd the leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace.

What is the problem?

They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal.

We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.

All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr. (15 January 1929 - 4 April 1968), African American clergyman, civil rights activist, and Nobel laureate, Christmas Sermon, Sunday, 24 December 1967

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