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

Those were the words spoken by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous speech at the Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, one year to the day of his murder in Memphis, Tennessee. The people who heard that speech recognized it as one of the most powerful speeches ever given articulating the immorality of the Viet Nam war. At the same time, some also knew that King was signing his own death warrant by exposing so forcefully the major perpetrator of the mass slaughter that was going on -- his own country. King was speaking out of anguish and outrage over the horrible suffering of millions of innocent Vietnamese civilians.

King knew that many children were also being victimized by a host of killing methods, including one of the US military's favorite, napalm, which burned the flesh off whatever part of the body it splashed on. King knew of the atrocities that our GIs were committing in the name of "anti-communism." And he saw the connections between the killing of "dispensable foreigners" in the Viet Nam battlefields and the oppression, discrimination, torture, and lynchings of "dispensable blacks" in America.

King was being faithful to his belief in nonviolence and his commitment to the ethics of Jesus by speaking out against injustice wherever he saw it. He knew that the violence of racism and the violence of militarism have the same sources: ignorance, fear and hatred of "the other" and keeping one's wealth and privilege from the poor and underprivileged on whose backs it may have been acquired.

He also knew that the opposition to his nonviolent movement was formidable: from ruthless racists in the south to J. Edgar Hoover's ruthless FBI in the north. This was dangerous enough, but, by speaking out, he was opposing entrenched economic and military systems of power whose capacity for violence reached unimaginable proportions.

Viet Nam was no exception to the rule that tremendous fortunes are made in every war. Weapons manufacturers thrived, expenditures for weapons research and development were massive and the war industries became deeply entrenched as essential for the economy. Large numbers of civilian jobs were created in many industries whose reason for being was the production of weapons of mass destruction, but essentially none of the workers recognized the Christian ethical dilemma of being involved in the process of homicidal violence professing discipleship to the nonviolent Jesus.

The economy boomed, but it boomed on borrowed money. And so the war was popular with the Pentagon, the CIA, the politicians, the defense industry and the decent, God-fearing job seekers who needed the work.

But King was a threat to those who wanted to keep the war on track. And exactly one year later he was dead.

King's April 4th speech was too truthful for the masters of war who had wanted the Vietnam conflict viewed as a patriotic war. So they sought to silence him. And what is done to progressive thinkers of all ages, even the nonviolent Jesus of 2000 years ago, now occurred to King; immediately, the propaganda machinery started trying to discredit him with disinformation.

And the brainwashed, unthinking public believed the lies, and support for King and the civil rights movement waned. The FBI led the campaign against King and, most credible historians believe, a hired assassin other than the "framed" James Earl Ray (who was never tried in a court of law) pulled the trigger on April 4, 1968.

The evidence is all around us that America is losing its soul. Violence of all types, especially gun violence, is escalating. Those making huge profits in weapons are in bed with the NRA, which has sabotaged even the most modest handgun and assault rifle controls for a decade -- all the while flooding America and the world with lethal weapons.

It may be too late now to stop the carnage. Both the affluent and the poor have succumbed to the common addictions of capitalism gone awry. Entertainment, gambling, shopping, drug, sports and religious addictions have overwhelmed the lives of large numbers of Americans who then have no time or energy left to tend to the soul. The idolatrous Decade of Greed -- the hope for the attainment of wealth at all costs -- blew out the spark of spirituality in many of those addicted to wealth attainment, simultaneously increasing the desperate poverty of billions who live in the 3rd world.

At the end of his Viet Nam speech, King concluded: "War is not the answer... We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality and strength without sight."

"Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons (and daughters) of God, and our brothers (and sisters) wait eagerly for our response."

America, including its Christian churches, has failed the vision of Martin Luther King. It is on the brink of spiritual death. Each billion spent for war and war preparation is equivalent to two billion dollars that is then unavailable for food, housing, education, medicine or useful jobs. We sealed our doom bought the coffin so to speak -- in the 1980s with borrowed money -- which our children will have to repay.

The coffin is lying on the altar of godless capitalism, alongside the idols of blind anti-communism and the massive Pentagon budgets of the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush eras.

And nobody is worried that the each new crop of politicians seems eager to nail it shut.

© Gary G. Kohls, MD, 1306 E.8th St., Duluth, MN 55805 Ph/fax (218) 728-9756, email: gkohls@cpinternet.com, Midwest Coordinator for Every Church A Peace Church (http://www.ecapc.org).