We’re caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly…I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.

– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I first used this quote when I wrote a version of my first post on Sandy Hook Elementary, back when Jared Loughner shot Gabby Giffords. I think that the ongoing resolution of this fundamental tension—being what I ought and allowing you to be what you ought—is the basic dynamic of a peacefully contentious politics.

The source of this quote is King’s speech “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” which he delivered as Oberlin College, but also at the National Cathedral in Washington on March 31, 1968…