Strong Men, Strong Words

Check out Tony Woodlief's reflections on Martin Luther King, Jr. Great post. I've excerpted one part here:

"Every age is filled with men willing to murder the carriers of ideas, even when they don't understand them. The words first have to strike at their hearts, however.
I've been listening to Martin Luther King's speeches today, and lamenting that the times of great oration have passed for our country. Words are cheaper now, as are most of the men who utter them. Ideas have been displaced by soundbytes. It's safer to speak that way, I suppose, and the overriding goal of the politician is to win, not to lead. I think people hated King because he spoke unsafely. He illuminated what Solzhenitsyn called the line dividing good and evil, the line that runs through every human heart. That is surely dangerous business.
I wonder where the prophets of this generation are. Where are the ones who will illuminate that line in every heart? It is so much easier to draw lines between people, between a virtuous Us and a nefarious Them, than to say: This is the evil we do, the evil I do. I wonder if no modern-day Martin Luther Kings rise up because our civilization is no longer capable of producing them, or because we no longer deserve them. Or perhaps they are there, crying out in the wilderness, and we all of us — myself included — have our televisions and ipods and internal self-focused monologues turned up too loudly to hear them."