War is wrong. Conscription for war is inconsistent with freedom of conscience, which is not merely the right to believe but to act on the degree of truth that one receives, to follow a vocation which is God-inspired and God-directed.
Interpretation
War compromises individual freedom and conscience.
Bayard Rustin's quote emphasizes that war contradicts the fundamental principle of freedom of conscience, asserting that individuals should have the right to act according to their beliefs and the truths they hold dear. Moreover, it highlights that being conscripted into war suppresses one's ability to follow a divinely inspired path, challenging the moral and spiritual autonomy of individuals.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of individual freedoms, one might quote Bayard Rustin to emphasize the moral implications of conscription.
Twenty-five, 30 years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging the character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian.
God does not require us to achieve any of the good tasks that humanity must pursue. What God requires of us is that we not stop trying.
If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.
If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.
My activism did not spring from being black...The racial injustice that was present in this country during my youth was a challenge to my belief in the oneness of the human family.
I am an opponent of war and of war preparations and an opponent of universal military training and conscription; but entirely apart from that issue, I hold that segregation in any part of the body politic is an act of slavery and an act of war.
Worse that drugs is drug trafficking. Much worse. Drugs are a disease, and I don't think that there are good drugs or that marijuana is good. Nor cigarettes. No addiction is good. I include alcohol. The only good addiction is love. Forget everything else.
In my youth I regarded the universe as an open book, printed in the language of equations, whereas now it appears to me as a text written in invisible ink, of which in our rare moments of grace we are able to decipher a small segment.
There is a cultural factor promoting violence which nowadays undoubtedly is highly effective is the mass media. And particularly everything that enters our minds through pictorial media.
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.
Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors, I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust.
So really what it comes down to, it's God. Wherever you look, it's God appearing as this, that, that...and what you really love and appreciate in each form is the divine formless out of which each form comes. But to be able to sense that you have to sense it in yourself first. And that is seeing the beauty in everything, that's really what it means.
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