50 Years After MLK’s Antiwar Speech, Military Budget More Bloated Than Ever

FEATURING LINDSAY KOSHGARIAN – Exactly a year before he was brutally assassinated the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave one of the most important speeches of his life called Beyond Vietnam. In the speech – which elites like to ignore – Dr. King addressed the, “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.”

This week is the fiftieth anniversary of that speech and while the US is no longer mired in the Vietnam War, we have enmeshed ourselves in many more wars: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and more.

The US military budget, already the largest of any nation by far, consumes an ever-greater share of our tax dollars. With Donald Trump’s promise to raise the war-fighting budget by a whopping ten percent, it is time to remind ourselves just how lopsided our national priorities remain.

Read National Priorities’ research on ‘U.S.’s Militarized Budget’ at www.nationalpriorities.org.

Lindsay Koshgarian, Research Director at National Priorities Project.