Moderation doesn't work against evil

The Rude Pundit offers some quotes from Dr. King.

Martin Luther King Would Still Fuck Your Shit Up (A Call to Democrats to Sack Up)

Here's one you might not have heard: Speaking to a small group of protesters outside Santa Rita prison in California, on January 14, 1968, where he had visited Joan Baez and other jailed anti-war activists and draft resisters, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, in remarks that ought to resonate not just with President Obama, but with cowardly Democrats and everyone who thinks that moderation works:

"And I say to you in conclusion that we must continue to stand up and we must continue to follow the dictates of our conscience, even if that means breaking unjust laws. Henry David Thoreau said in his essay on civil disobedience that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. And I do not plan to cooperate with evil at any point.

"Somebody said to me not too long ago, 'Dr. King, don't you think you're hurting your leadership by taking a stand against the war in Vietnam? Aren't people who once respected you gonna lose respect for you? And aren't you hurting the budget of your organization?'

"And I had to look at that person and say, 'I'm sorry, sir, but you don't know me. I am not a consensus leader. And I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of the Southern Leadership Conference or by taking a Gallup poll of the majority opinion.'

"Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but he's a molder of consensus. And on some positions, cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expedience asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?'

"But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'

"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right. And that is where I stand today and that is where I hope you will continue to stand so that we can speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters all over the world and righteousness like a mighty stream. And we will speed up the day when men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and nations will not rise up against nations neither they will not start a war anymore and I close by saying as we sing in the old Negro spiritual, 'I Ain't Gonna Study War No More.'"

We forget, amid all the deification, what a tough bastard King was. We admire him because he was uncompromising and principled, and also because he fought like lives depended on it. Because they did.

They still do. Moderation doesn't work against evil forces, i.e. the far right. They need to be stomped flat with all the strength that can be brought against them. It's almost metaphorical to say that it is kill or be killed.