MLK Best post ever.

ReddHedd at firedoglake has this post up that really says it all. It even manages to sum up why I started blogging. ReddHedd is one of the most thoughtful and passionate bloggers I have had the opportunity to read. I encourage you to go visit.

Dr. King has fundamentally changed the world. He has given hope a language, has allowed the disenfranchised to have a voice. His legacy continues even today. He believed that using your voice is the best way to further heroic goals of equality for all and that silence in the face of opposition is a quiet betrayal.

Some of the best quotes from Dr. Kings speeches are recorded by ReddHedd in the post but I'll cut and past some of my favorites anyway.

Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963:

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.

Strength to Love, 1963:

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence speech, April 4, 1967:

"A time comes when silence is betrayal...."

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.