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Martin luther king beyond vietnam argumentative essay
Martin luther king Jr vietnam essay
Martin luther king Jr vietnam essay
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"Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam" On April 30, 1967, Riverside Church, in New York, Martin Luther King gave a speech about how the Vietnam War was wrong in front of three thousand people. Most of his audience was church leaders. The speech was about twenty minutes. He stated that he is not only preaching about God, he also cared about the conditions of Vietnamese people in the war. In his speech, he claimed that the war was evil and unjust and it should be stopped. Martin Luther King used unexpected words, religious imagery, and his credibility to show the ugly side of the Vietnam War in his speech. Dr. King didn’t only use his religious faith as a way to establish his credibility and to convince people, he also mentioned about his …show more content…
King emphasized the word “Children” as a way to capture audience’s emotions. He said, “There 's something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, ‘Be non-violent toward Jim Clark’, but will curse and damn you when you say, ‘Be non-violent toward little brown Vietnamese children. There 's something wrong with that press!” (King). This made people angry because they see that the press is pro-violence to the children in Vietnam. When people think about children, they think about peace, innocence, love and their happy families; not violence. So they kept thinking, “Vietnamese children do nothing wrong; why are our men killing them?” Then Martin Luther King said, “They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers” (King). This quote delivered disturbing horrible pictures to the audiences. Families are the most important things to the majority of people especially who have kids. People saw that the U.S soldiers were destroying families in Vietnam and it would make people wonder, “What would we do if the same things happen to our families in America?” Then, people would think if they support the war, they support the deaths of innocent children and their families. This is one of his strongest point in his speech to convince people to be against the …show more content…
King’s speech emphasized directly the truth to his audience with the supports from religious imagery. In his determined voice, he said, “And who are we supporting in Vietnam today? It 's a man by the name of general Ky [Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky] who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler”(King). “Hitler”, a name that makes people feel scared, disgusted, and angry. People hate Hitler. His choice of using the name triggered people to wonder themselves if they support the war, they are friends with Hitler and they are against humanity. Then, King told that God commanded him to tell the truth, “The truth must be told” (King). This sentence made people to think that Dr. King as a man of God-- who only tells the truth. As Orwell mentioned about political speech in “Politics and the English Language”, “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible” (Orwell). However, in the speech, instead of using fancy words to hide the true stories to the audience, Dr. King directly delivered the message about Ky because he was against the war. Dr. King’s speech was a combination between religious imagery and
Iwo Jima Speech DETAILED OUTLINE INTRODUCATION: 1. What is the difference between a. and a. GAIN ATTENTION: (30sec PowerPoint Presentation) Good Morning Marines. My name is and your next period of instruction will be on the Island of Iwo Jima. 2.
Martin Luther king states 7 arguments to show his opposition to the Americans aiding the Vietnam at war. One of the reason he is against the war is that, he is against violence and America is promoting violence by fighting against the Liberation Front. It states as he walk among the ghettos of the North, and saw these “desperate, rejected and angry young men” using the “Molotov cocktails,” using violence he told them that violence is not the solution to their problems, rather they should approach a nonviolent solution. They asked him, then “what about Vietnam?” (King, 152) this question provoked him to speak against the war. In conclusion, in order for the violence to stop, in America, the government have to take the first step, so that the
What were Eugene McCarthy’s motives for going against the Vietnam War? From the early 1960s up until the year 1973, America was going through the Anti-War Movement. The movement had many leaders, supporters, and followers, including Martin Luther King Jr., Eugene McCarthy, and Robert F. Kennedy. The Anti-War Movement took place in order to demand the government put an end to U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia and to stop the escalation of the Vietnam War. On December 2 of 1967, Eugene McCarthy gave his “Denouncing the Vietnam War” speech in the state of Chicago, in front of the Democratic Party. He speaks out against the war in order to point out what an immoral and pointless battle that the United States were fighting. In Eugene McCarthy’s “Denouncing the Vietnam War” speech, he inspires his intended audience during the Antiwar Movement by using the rhetorical devices of logos and personification.
Dr. King is a man who is over flowed of nothing but creditability. Not once he pointed his finger as a child would and blame the Caucasian men for forcing the African-American to attempt to survive a horrific ordeal of history. He encouraged his brother and sisters of color not to protests with bitter and physical violence but to engage hands and peacefully demand to be treated equally. He encouraged his colored brothers and sisters to go back to where they are from with not despair in their hearts, but hope that one day there will be freedom within reach.
The American public knew about Martin Luther King long before they had ever heard about the war in Vietnam. King was associated with the war in Vietnam only after accomplishing his finest civil rights works, and after US involvement in Vietnam was already nine years old. They met in 1965, and battled each other until King's death in 1968. By 1965 King saw a federal voter rights bill passed for minorities, had national financial support, and even gained the backing of President Johnson himself. We all know Martin Luther King Jr. as the man who helped desegregate America, as a great civil rights leader. But seldom do we know King as the outspoken anti-war advocate that he was by the end of his life. The government and the media are careful to step away from King's views on the Vietnam War. Some say that speaking out was the biggest mistake of King's life and career. In terms of public support and popularity, King's critics are right to say that it was a mistake to speak against Vietnam. However, King's life and work are evidence that popularity was never his goal. King was justified both in speaking out against the war and in his reasons for opposing it; the things that made him a great civil rights leader were the things that compelled him to speak out against the war.
He was referring to the white American political community, white American religious community and the African American community. In his letter, Dr. King effectively uses different methods such as logical appeals, ethical appeals, and emotional values.
Three key ideals that Dr. King exemplified in his meeting with my father were to show respect for women, to use peace and not violence, and to not give up in the face of adversity. The sheer fact that my father served as one of Dr. King's lieutenants proves that Dr. King stressed the importance of respect for women. He did not want women or children to be subjected to the dangers of hurling objects while they were marching. He felt that the men should stand on the outside to protect the women and children who marched.
Perhaps the reason authorities were so irritated by Martin Luther King’s protests would be on the account of the fact he does nothing wrong. “His efforts successfully merged the anti-Vietnam war movement ...
In the beginning of his Beyond Vietnam speech, King recalled that “there were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of society gone mad on war” (6). By using such descriptive language that appeals to one of our five senses, sight, King was able to help the American people paint an image of the jubilant road that the United States was presumptively heading and then crushed, when it became involved with the Vietnam War. Furthermore, King adds that sending US troops to fight the war was not only devastating the hopes of the poor at home, but it is equivalent as “sending their sons their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population” (15). King’s usage of various descriptors provided insightful imagery, which allows his audience to picture as if they were the ones who actually sent their own loved ones to war. Martin Luther King Jr.’s use of appealing to the feeling of pity, anger, and sadness to strengthen and refine his
In the letter his rebuttal is “they" had no other options, except to prepare for direct action,” and, Dr. King has many logical pieces of proof to support his point. When proving his point he used several different strategies, one strategy he used is including historical evidence in his letters, like when he writes, "We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal. "(King 1963) He also used some logical fallacies, when he is appealing to the authority, like when he writes, “Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...”(King 1963) This is an appeal to authority because he is including a well respected name of someone famous, and saying that this well respected person agrees with him, so his idea must be correct.
King’s second tool was pathos. He used this tool to show concern and appeal to the emotions of the audience by pointing out the number of deaths the war was causing. Dr. King stated, “It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population” (King). He mentioned here that Americans were sending the men in their lives to fight and die in the war. He also made sure that he emphasizes the amount of lives lost without stating the actual number by using the words “extraordinarily high proportions” (King). He showed more emotion by doing this. Dr. King mentioned that the government was taking the poor men from before and sending them far away from home to fight and die for liberties of another nation that they have not yet received. He stated, “We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem” (King). Dr. King said that he could not sit back and watch as they burned villages and killed innocent citizens and not speak out by stating, “And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor” (King). Dr. King would not be silent about the
On the fourth of April in 1967, Michael King Jr, also known as Martin Luther King Jr, spoke to the American public in the speech titled Beyond Vietnam—A Time to Break Silence. Throughout this speech, King addressed a conflict that occurred during the late 1960’s which was extremely controversial; the Vietnam War. In the speech King detailed his position on the war and particularly discussed why he was against fighting in Vietnam. King utilized many rhetorical devices in order to explain the reasons why he was against this armed conflict. The rhetorical devices that are utilized the most in the speech is specifically logos and anecdotes. Through the use of rhetorical devices, King thrived in convincing his audience into believing that entering the war was a tragic mistake. In the speech, King used many anecdotes and logos to strengthen the persuasiveness of his argument in order to lead the audience into believing the reasons of why the war was negative.
Three of the most famous speeches of all times are “I Have a Dream”, “A Time to Break Silence” and “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”. Written by Martin Luther King Jr., these speeches were well delivered and successful. Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man who certainly left an impact. King was a Baptist minister and social activist who played an extremely huge role in the Civil Rights movement. People before his time, like Mahatma Gandhi, helped to shape him into the man he was and inspired him throughout his involvement in the Civil Rights movement. King thought African Americans, people who struggled economically, and the ones who were victims of injustice deserved equality. Peaceful protests were King’s chosen method of accomplishing this
Throughout King’s speech, he uses the rhetorical mode, pathos, to give the audience an ambience of strong emotions such as sympathy. For example, whites had sympathy for African Americans and parents had sympathy for their children. The way that King tells his speech takes the focus off of race and reestablishes it on the aspiration of a world without racism. “…by making his audience no longer hate Negroes and instead hate racism and wish for a new, better world…” (L., Anson). Dr. King made the audience sympathize with African Americans, helping the audience realize that racist people and bias ideas caused the true dilemma of discrimination. Through making the audience realize this, he also gave them hope for a world reborn without racism, without segregation, without discrimination, and without hate. King wanted his children to live in a world without judgment of race, but with the consideration of personality, for nobody should not endure judgment because of the way that they look. He spoke of his own children, which introduced a reinforced emotional attachment to the audience; this gave many parents a scenario to relate to because no parent wants ...
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a minister and a social activist. He was known as the man who led the Civil rights movement. He applied philosophy, religion, and laws in his arguments. He quotes the clergymen when they say his activities are “unwise and untimely” (King 411) The clergymen are pretty much saying King should have waited. He goes against that statement by saying, “Actually time is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively” (King 418). Ultimately King was responding to the clergymen’s letter and addressing the problem of segregation. King utilizes literary and rhetorical strategies in order to get his point across and he does it