Dr. King’s Christmas Sermon on Peace Warned America To Change
America ignored him
“This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without. Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night. Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities. And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and goodwill toward all men can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some utopian. If we don’t have goodwill toward men in this world, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments and our own power. Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the very destructive power of modern weapons of warfare eliminates even the possibility that war may any longer serve as a negative good. And so, if we assume that life is worth living, if we assume that mankind has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war — and so let us this morning explore the conditions for peace. Let us this morning think anew on the meaning of that Christmas hope: “Peace on Earth, Good Will toward Men.”
Dr. King presented the human challenge here for America on Christmas Day 1967 with his sermon on peace. Drop the racism, militarism, economic exploitation. All of it. Reform. Be, re-born. America told him to jump in the East River. Five months later, Dr. King was dead.
In his famous sermon, Dr. King called on everyone to do better. It was prophetic in 1967 but today, in 2024 with a authoritarian in waiting, ready to be President again, America has shot itself in the foot with this choice of leadership.
America’s propaganda machine has its work cut out now. It will have to convince the world that Donald Trump can run the world safely and competently as Emperor of America and its corporate neo-colonial superstructure. This will have to get done with a legion of incompetent, unqualified people Trump is bringing on. The empire is no longer the empire and everyone knows it.
Some of these persons chosen by Trump have questionable morals, values, and ethics. They are perfect for a nation with no direction, goals, or leadership.
America is just a brutal empire now; that’s all. It has long since sold its government to the corporate sector. Its politicians are ceremonial corporate miscreants with no power or ethics. The corporate sector calls the shots; Democrats and Republicans say ‘yessuh, boss!’
Soon, the American people will realize more and more under Trump they are on their own. This is not a country; this is a casino.
The states (I hope you live in a good one) will have to lead. But mostly, we, the people will need to be self guided, public citizens. We will need to say with our action, we, the people, are in this together. We humans. It is really not about the country anymore but humanity.
The country that runs the world can’t run it anymore. It is morally lost on the 25th day of December 2024. It elected a disaster of a man twice now.
It has most of all proven Dr. King correct. America needed to change Dr. King said. Be re- born. America did not change fundamentally and instead it has doubled down and is in a death spiral. Peace and blessings my friends!
