The King’s Speech

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”

It was lie that no one believed back on the playground at recess, and no one believes today.

Words matter.

Words matter in “The King’s Speech”, a terrific film that will win all sorts of awards this year, a film that dramatizes the struggle of England’s King George VI to overcome, with the aid of a speech therapist, a debilitating stutter, enabling the king to be a voice of hope and courage for a nation that soon battled to fend off the Nazi threat.

Word mattered on the Mall back in 1963, as another king, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, stirred a nation to be true to its founding ideals:

“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 quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.”

Words mattered back when the King of Kings uttered these words some two millennia ago, words that are as true today as they were back then:

“Blessed are you who are poor,

   for yours is the kingdom of God.

     “Blessed are you who are hungry now,

   for you will be filled.

“Blessed are you who weep now,

   for you will laugh.

Words matter. It is not a matter of “rights”, not a matter of freedom of speech, not a matter of liberal versus conservative, not a matter of “censorship” or “political correctness.”  Words can be used to build up, or to tear down; to promote reconciliation, or to cause division; to heal, or to harm.

The choice, as always, is ours.