[Interlude: Orson Welles and Logic]
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This is Logic
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Ive spoken these words before but not on the radio
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To be born free is to be born in debt
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To live in freedom without fighting slavery
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To profiteer
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I have met Southerners who expect and fear a Negro insurrection
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I see no purpose in withholding this from general discussion
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There may be those within that outcast ten percent of the American people who someday will strike back at their oppressors
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But to put down that mob, a mob would rise
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Id like to ask, please: who will put down that mob?
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Im an overpaid producer with pleasant reasons to rejoice, and I do
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In the wholesome practicability of the profit system
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But surely, my right to having more than enough is cancelled
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If I dont use that more to help those who have less
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I owe the very profit I make to the people I make it from
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If this is radicalism, it comes automatically to most of us in show business
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It being generally agreed that any public man owes his position to the public
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Thats what I mean when I say Im your obedient servant
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We must, each day, earn what we own
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A healthy man owes to the sick all that he can do for them
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An educated man owes to the ignorant all that he can do for them
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A free man owes to the worlds slaves all that he can do for them
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And what is to be done is more, much more, than good works
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Christmas baskets, bonuses and tips, and bread and circuses
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There is only one thing to be done with slaves
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Free them
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If we cant die in behalf of progress, we can live for it
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Progress, we Americans take to mean, a fuller realization of democracy
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The measure of progress, as we understand it, is the measure of equality enjoyed by all men
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We can do something about that
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The way our fighting brothers and sisters looked at it
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Some of them dead as I speak these words
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The way they looked at it, were lucky
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And theyre right, were lucky to be alive
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But only if our lives make life itself worth dying for
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We must be worthy of our luck or we are damned
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Our lives were spared, but this is merely the silliest of accidents
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Unless we put the gift of life to the hard employments of justice
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If we waste that gift, we wont have anywhere to hide from the indignation of history
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I want to say this
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The morality of the auction block is out of date
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There is no room in the American century for Jim Crow
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Tomorrows democracy discriminates against discrimination
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Its charter wont include the freedom to end freedom
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Race hate isnt human nature, race hate is the abandonment of human nature
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But this is true
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There are alibis for the phenomenal excuses, economic and social
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But the brutal fact is simply this
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Where the racist lies acceptable, there is corruption
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The race haters must be stopped, the lynchings must be stopped
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The murders must be avenged
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I come in that boys name and in the name of all, who, in this land of ours, have no voice of their own
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I come with a call for action
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This is the time for it
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I call for action against the cause of riot
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It wont surprise me if Im accused in some quarters of inciting to riot
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Well, Im very interested in riots, Im very interested in avoiding them
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So I call for action against the cause of riots
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Law is the best action, the most decisive
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Its in the peoples power to see to it that what makes lynchings and starts wars is dealt with
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Not by well-wishers, but by policemen, and I mean good policemen
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Over several generations, maybe therell be men who cant be weaned away from the fascist vices of race hate
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But we should deny such men responsibility in public affairs
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Exactly as we deny responsibility to the wretched victims of the drug habit
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There are laws against peddling dope
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There can be laws against peddling race hate
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But every man has the right to his own opinion as an American boasts
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But race hate is not an opinion, its a phobia
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It isnt a viewpoint, race hate is a disease
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In a peoples world, the incurable racist has no rights
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He must be deprived of influence in a peoples government
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He must be segregated, as he himself would segregate the colored and semitic peoples
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Anything very big is very simple
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If theres a big race question, theres a big answer to it
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And a big answer is simple, like the word “no”
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America can write her name across this century, and so she will
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If we, the people, brown and black and red
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Rise now to the great occasion of our brotherhood
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It will take courage
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It calls for the doing of great deeds, which means the dreaming of great dreams
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Giving the world back to its inhabitants is too big a job for the merely practical
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No one of us will live to see a blameless peace
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We strive and pray and die for what will be here when were gone
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Our childrens children are the ancestors of a free people
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To the generations: the fight is worth it
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And that just about means that my time is up
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When my times up, I remain as always, obediently yours
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Arjun Ivatury
