BARACK and BEYOND VIETNAM! Democracy, now.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." -1963

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. -2008

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. You may or may not realize that it is only the 23rd Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, although this year will mark the 41st anniversary of his assassination. The day after tomorrow, Barack Obama will become the 44th President of the United States. If there is anyone out there who would understate the significance of this moment, they are as blessed with nerve as they are bereft of historical understanding.

If there is anyone out there who believes that Tuesday will mark the fulfillment of King's dreams, they are as blessed with simplicity as they are bereft of any real understanding at all.

Most social studies classes begin and end their discussion of King within the confines of the civil rights movement, the "I Have a Dream" speech standing as the complete rhetorical representation of the man himself. This is, of course, not at all the case, though the very establishment that usurps his name to celebrate itself would certainly prefer it that way. In reality, the time that King lived through in the latter half of the decade was devoted to much broader causes, including opposition to the war and the struggle against poverty. In retrospect, his later crusades seem like the logical extensions of a fight for equality, but while he lived, they were sharply criticized by both friend and foe, costing him the support of many of his civil rights allies while deepening the concerns of those who had always considered him a dangerous man. A year before his death, King delivered a speech known as "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence." Far less well-known than the "Dream" speech, it is every bit as moving if not moreso, and to say that it is still relevant today would be an understatement - it is a scalpel cutting into the cancer at the heart of America, which seems only to have grown with each passing year.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

If the inauguration was the culmination of King's dream, unprecedented billions in public aid would not have been doled out to wealthy corporations while the poor continued to starve. If the inauguration was the culmination of King's dream, a thousand deaths in Gaza would not have been met with silence. If the inauguration was the culmination of King's dream, the United States would not be the nation that imprisons more of its citizens than any other, or more of its black citizens than any other. If the inauguration was the culmination of King's dream, it would be time for us all to rest. It is not.

It is, though, a time for hope, because if there is anyone who knows that the inauguration is not the culmination of King's dream, it is Barack Obama. He's certainly told us as much, certainly wouldn't be asking us all to sacrifice and serve if our goals had already been achieved. If hope, if change, if the dream, if anything is to be realized, the weight is not just on Obama's shoulders, but our own. As he has said many times over, it must come from the bottom up.

Although he has yet to take his seat in the Oval Office, many of us are already weary that Obama will not live up to our hopes. The promise of withdrawal from Iraq is nullified by demands for deployments to Afghanistan. The staff selected by a candidate who promised something new looks eerily similar to one that let us down time and again a decade ago. The economic relief promised to the working class is already quietly being shuffled towards the same overstuffed pockets as always. There is much to criticize, and criticize it we must.

But while we should not hesitate to hold his feet to the fire, we also must keep something in mind: Barack Obama isn't Martin Luther King, Jr. He is not a preacher, he is President. He is not someone chosen to speak on behalf of our most hallowed beliefs, he is someone chosen to execute realities. In a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, he is merely the administrator. Dr. King is a hero because he would not compromise. If Barack Obama does not compromise, his administration will fail, taking all of its possibility down with it. His role, which he is eminently suited for, is a pragmatic one. The real responsibility now, the ideals, the ideas, the morality, the mind, the soul, they all lie in the hands of the rest of us, whether we are ready or not.

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."

November 4 proved that democracy has not yet perished from this earth, but right now it's not enough to simply survive. It's time to be living.