THE POWER OF WORDS

In my 75 years I have seen a lot of important people come and go. I remember the assassination of John Kennedy and the crazy four days that we were all glued to the television set. Television stations went off the air around 11:00 PM at night back then but Friday, Saturday and Sunday up until the funeral on Monday there was 24 hour news coverage. Malcolm X died in a hail of gunfire two years later in 1965.  Then there was that crazy year of 1968 when both Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. George Wallace survived an assassination atempt in 1972 that left him a paraplegic. President Ford survived two assassination attempts within a month of each other in 1975. John Lennon was murdered in December 1980. Ronald Reagan was nearly killed in 1981. Then there was the near assassination of President Trump in July 2024 and the assassination of Charlie Kirk in 2025. 

In all of these situations with the exception of maybe President Ford or John Lennon, I either heard people around me say they were glad it happened or I heard about people saying insensitive things like that. When Kennedy died I heard some of my school mates saying that they were glad that he died. I was working the night MLK died and many of the people I worked with were also happy. I heard comments like I am glad that N is dead or I am glad that SOB is dead. Riots immediately broke out all over the country when MLK died. Here in Tennessee riots broke out in Memphis and Nashville. The National Guard was called out to help quell the violence. 

Although human behavior doesn't shock me anymore It was pretty jarring to hear and read about so many people disappointed that President Trump had survived and that so many were happy because Charlie Kirk had died. Maybe this is because of social media. If social media had been around 60 years ago we might find that people really haven't changed that much. Personally I believe things have changed a lot. Negative behavior was more on the fringe then. Most people might have harbored negative feelings about the deceased but people were respectful. If you had nothing good to say you just said nothing at all or you highlighted the good aspects of a persons character if they had any. More people on the left have abandoned these values of decency and respect than on the right I believe. 

 Words are powerful things. This is one of the greatest lessons that my mother ever taught me. I was not allowed to use racial slurs at a time in the Democrat South that racial slurs were used on a regular basis out in the open.

When I would play Army with my friends and she heard me call someone a Jap I was called out for it. According to her they were Japanese, not Japs. A policeman was not a cop. He was a police officer. I could not call someone a liar. They were story tellers. Profanity was not allowed  although my father would sometimes use colorful language like damn or hell when he was talking to other males. 

 We weren't allowed to even say dern or darn. Something like dadgummit was more acceptable. Even among hardened men I noticed that their language softened in the presence of women or children. I never heard or saw the f word until I was eleven years old. I saw it written on a wall and I asked my shocked mother what it meant. Although she never explained it this way demeaning language is dehumanizing. It is easier to kill, or mistreat an N*gger, a gook a kike, a greaser, wet back, Jap, or whatever ethnic or racial slurs that you direct at people. I also learned in later life that it is easier to abort a baby when it is a fetus or a clump of cells. She taught me that showing respect toward someone increases their value as a human being. By teaching me Christian principles I learned that humans are valued by God. We were fearfully and wonderfully made. 

By calling our side garbage, deplorables, and Nazi's, or president Trump Hitler it makes it easier for the crazies on the left to.come gunning for us. Words are powerful. I wasn't happy when President Trump called Ilhan Omar and her followers garbage. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. Although I think that she and probably most Somalians need to be sent packing. On the night that MLK was assassinated much of the country was burning and in chaos. Robert Kennedy was giving a campaign speech in Indianapolis that night when he heard the news about MLK. The crowd that he was speaking to was mostly black and they were not aware of MLK's death yet. Of course there were no cellphones back then. Because of his words on that night, however; there was no violence in Indianapolis as a result of MLK's death. The following is what he told the crowd. This was a uniting speech. Words that you will probably never hear a modern day Democrat ever say again. 

Robert Kennedy April 4, 1968

I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.

(Gasps were audible in the audience)

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black--considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible--you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization--black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.

So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love--a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.