That does it. People were becoming agreeable.

I know that many posters in this string will find the following excerpts most distasteful:

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.

Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.

Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

SOMETHING SHOCKING FOR MANY IN THIS STRING – Part 2

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" delivered 28 August 1963, Washington D.C http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/Ihaveadream.htm

idealism and reality rarely meet.. as history shows, how about been idealistic when you dream and realsitic when you vote...

Thank you Plantaganet.

Many of us have dreams and many of them bear fruit - without dreams to guide us forward there will be no reality.

Denying humans their humanity diminishes our world, our prospects, our future.

Long live the dreamers!

In writing that he is thinking of forming a "Queen Isabella Society", John Stone is not only particularly offensive - he also displays a blindness to history. Mr Stone accuses Islam of providing non-Muslims with a choice between conversion or being "at best a second-class citizen or at worst a candidate for extinction". In fact, this attitude perfectly describes Isabella's attitude not only towards Muslims, but also towards Jews. Under Ferdinand and Isabella, the co-existence of religious communities (not always on equal terms but during the best times very nearly so) which underlay the intellectual energy of Moorish Spain came to a brutal end. Many of the Jews fleeing religious persecution in Spain found refuge in Muslim societies. The formation of a "Queen Isabella Society" would be a worrying development for Jews as well as Muslims. Mr Stone may be an economist rather than a historian, but one would expect him to have heard of the Spanish Inquisition.
It's worth noting that by 1492, the Moors had been in Spain for a good three centuries - a lot longer than the history of white settlement in this country.
Kay: you write of having learned about the dangers of "Middle Eastern immigration" from a Rat of Tobruk. In these days of multi-ethnic and multi-religious families, you will find that many Australian war veterans have grandchildren who are Muslim and/or of partly Middle Eastern descent. I am Muslim, I am of Pakistani and Scottish descent, and my grandfather was a Rat of Tobruk. We were very close, and he was always very strongly against racial and religious bigotry. He hated it when Bruce Ruxton and others tried to find moral justification for racism in their war service - he had no time for that. Nor did his mates. I do not condemn bigotry like John Stone's only because I am Muslim and brown skinned - I do so because of the values taught to me by my white Rat of Tobruk grandfather.

Thanks anarkali.

Your eloquent comments touched me.

I come from a "lily WASP" background.

My grandfather was wounded in Gallipoli fighting the (Muslim) Turks and then fought the Japanese in World War Two - he was no racist.

My father fought the Viet Cong (Vietnam War) and did not agree with the racists either.

It shows people's courage and nobility of spirit that even when they're being shot at by another race they don't blame the race for whats happened.

Plantagenet