It is impossible to begin this lecture without again expressing my deep appreciation to the Nobel Committee of the Norwegian Parliament for bestowing upon me and the civil rights movement in the United States such a great honor. Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meaning can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart. Such is the moment I am presently experiencing. I experience this high and joyous moment not for myself alone but for those devotees of nonviolence who have moved so courageously against the ramparts of racial injustice and who in the process have acquired a new estimate of their own human worth. Many of them are young and cultured. Others are middle aged and middle class. The majority are poor and untutored. But they are all united in the quiet conviction that it is better to suffer in dignity than to accept segregation in humiliation. These are the real heroes of the freedom struggle: they are the noble people for whom I accept the Nobel Peace Prize.
Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
QUESTION ON BUILDING A MIDDLE CLASS AS WAY TO BRING PEACE
Making globalization work for the American middle class requires substantial investment in communities across the United States and a comprehensive plan that helps industries and regions adjust to economic disruptions.
At the same time, middle-class Americans are concerned about the cost of U.S. interventions and the potential for political overreach. They want the country to exercise its power judiciously and to selectively seek out the best opportunities for effecting positive change. But to credibly assert global leadership, the United States must redress democratic deficits and social, racial, and economic injustice at home while seeking to reclaim the moral high ground abroad. The United States must get its own house in order.
To better herself, Rigoberta worked as a servant in an urban middle-class household. Misused and criticized for her Indian ways, she experienced the deep divide that exists between the Indians and the rest of Guatemalan society.
In Book Six of the Ethics Aristotle says that all knowledge can be classified into three categories: theoretical knowledge, practical knowledge, and productive knowledge. Put simply, these kinds of knowledge are distinguished by their aims: theoretical knowledge aims at contemplation, productive knowledge aims at creation, and practical knowledge aims at action. Theoretical knowledge involves the study of truth for its own sake; it is knowledge about things that are unchanging and eternal, and includes things like the principles of logic, physics, and mathematics (at the end of the Ethics Aristotle says that the most excellent human life is one lived in pursuit of this type of knowledge, because this knowledge brings us closest to the divine). The productive and practical sciences, in contrast, address our daily needs as human beings, and have to do with things that can and do change. Productive knowledge means, roughly, know-how; the knowledge of how to make a table or a house or a pair of shoes or how to write a tragedy would be examples of this kind of knowledge. This entry is concerned with practical knowledge, which is the knowledge of how to live and act. According to Aristotle, it is the possession and use of practical knowledge that makes it possible to live a good life. Ethics and politics, which are the practical sciences, deal with human beings as moral agents. Ethics is primarily about the actions of human beings as individuals, and politics is about the actions of human beings in communities, although it is important to remember that for Aristotle the two are closely linked and each influences the other.
This brings us to perhaps the most contentious of political questions: how should the regime be organized? Another way of putting this is: who should rule? In Books IV-VI Aristotle explores this question by looking at the kinds of regimes that actually existed in the Greek world and answering the question of who actually does rule. By closely examining regimes that actually exist, we can draw conclusions about the merits and drawbacks of each. Like political scientists today, he studied the particular political phenomena of his time in order to draw larger conclusions about how regimes and political institutions work and how they should work. As has been mentioned above, in order to do this, he sent his students throughout Greece to collect information on the regimes and histories of the Greek cities, and he uses this information throughout the Politics to provide examples that support his arguments. (According to Diogenes Laertius, histories and descriptions of the regimes of 158 cities were written, but only one of these has come down to the present: the Constitution of Athens mentioned above).
Also, these are the first elections after the pandemic. Colombia, already one of the most unequal countries in the world, is now more unequal. It also augmented its rampant classism and racism. Duque, even before the pandemic, wasnt seen as particularly empathetic and interested in governing on behalf of the poor and the middle class, which led to the 2021 civic strike. Colombia is now a cauldron of insecurity and a lot of indignation. It is an incredibly emotional and polarized moment.
Civil rights for the great majority of citizens in the United States are at stake with the rapidly declining middle class. We need to address this declining population as we review those values that are at stake. Betty - WI
Our contry is in dangerous territory. Instead of we the people, we have become a nation of we the few-those who hold the wealth are managing to buy their way into our government. Our leaders use fear and misinformation to their advantage whilst attempting to remove the programs the middle class so desperately needs. Fight back, open your minds, listen and learn, and we can prevail Diana - NJ
We the people are sick and tired of you ignoring the constitution. We the people stand for a higher moral value in tough times. We the people believe in due process. We the people demand you do your job and stop placing the burden's of your corporate war on the poor and middle class while the richest get richer. H. David - MA
This tragedy was co-opted by moneyed interests by the Bush administration to further their agenda via the war in Iraq. Further, by passing laws to further "national security" the upper strata have increased their control, manipulation and the resulting subservience of middle and poor class people. "Never waste a crisis, when you can make money from it!" has worked for the rich. James - CO
The Elites use of fear to control the population following 9/11 was an unconscionable abuse of power. The ceaseless state of perceived emergency attached to the post 9/11 climate in America allows for the perpetual violation of certain Constitutional protections. Coercive interrogation toward suspected terrorists is tolerated, if not wholly endorsed by the government and its people, yet liberal Courts have been consistent in holding that coercion elicits inherently untrustworthy information. Also, "voluntarily" and "coercion" are terms open to legal interpretation, bringing into question when the former ends and the latter begins. To propel this notion one step farther, it is the same ambiguous language which challenges the verisimilitude of coerced confessions and blurs the line of delineation separating interrogation from torture. Jeff - PA
There appears to be no distinction between the parties, anymore, merely a desire by politicians to continue giving themselves and other rich people and entities assistance, at the expense of the people. The rich-poor gap, lack of upward mobility in this country, and consistent cutting of social service programs, while completely eroding the "middle class," is reprehensible. Kat - NC
Corporate America and the party that supports them must be stopped from their destruction of the middle class. This country was not founded to become the plutocracy they are leading us into. Michael - GA
The price which society pays for the law of competition, like the price it pays for cheap comforts and luxuries, is also great; but the advantage of this law are also greater still, for it is to this law that we owe our wonderful material development, which brings improved conditions in its train. But, whether the law be benign or not, we must say of it, as we say of the change in the conditions of men to which we have referred: It is here; we cannot evade it; no substitutes for it have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race. Having accepted these, it follows that there must be great scope for the exercise of special ability in the merchant and in the manufacturer who has to conduct affairs upon a great scale. That this talent for organization and management is rare among men is proved by the fact that it invariably secures for its possessor enormous rewards, no matter where or under what laws or conditions. The experienced in affairs always rate the MAN whose services can be obtained as a partner as not only the first consideration, but such as to render the question of his capital scarcely worth considering, for such men soon create capital; while, without the special talent required, capital soon takes wings. Such men become interested in firms or corporations using millions; and estimating only simple interest to be made upon the capital invested, it is inevitable that their income must exceed their expenditures, and that they must accumulate wealth. Nor is there any middle ground which such men can occupy, because the great manufacturing or commercial concern which does not earn at least interest upon its capital soon becomes bankrupt. It must either go forward or fall behind: to stand still is impossible. It is a condition essential for its successful operation that it should be thus far profitable, and even that, in addition to interest on capital, it should make profit. It is a law, as certain as any of the others named, that men possessed of this peculiar talent for affair, under the free play of economic forces, must, of necessity, soon be in receipt of more revenue than can be judiciously expended upon themselves; and this law is as beneficial for the race as the others. 2ff7e9595c
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