A Quick Word About Martin Luther King Jr.

On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Junior delivered a famous speech at Riverside Church in New York City, his first to overtly tackle the Vietnam war. This was exactly -- to the day -- a year before he was shot and killed. He didn't like the direction in which America was heading, and today we celebrate his birth by letting a bunch of people take days (you) or half-days (me) off from work. So maybe ponder these words from Riverside as you watch another Dr., like Dr. Phil, on the teevee. As you kill the day:

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries.... If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Now go plant a tree, or maybe build a friendly fence. Just leave the Internet for the afternoon. When you come back, it will be as it always was.