very good Charles Taylor on the third volume of Taylor Branch's Martin Luther King biography--

"Against the current certainty on the right and the left that the other side is beneath contempt, not worth talking to -- an attitude that leaves no possibility for real change and reduces democracy to majority tyranny, no matter who is in power -- we have King's belief in the ability of people and their country to overcome the worst in themselves. In his vision empathy is not appeasement but the beginning of change. In his introduction, Branch quotes the last words of Mickey Schwerner, spoken to the Klansmen who held a gun to his head: "Sir, I know just how you feel." That's the challenge this story throws down to us. How can any less be expected of those of us who don't have a gun to our heads?"