Even if you forget the fact that not everyone is aware of these ideas. Are we really debating whether impassioned speech can make a difference, even if the content of the speech isn't completely brand new?
An INTJ's Conversation with Martin Luther King jr.
You had a dream? Look buddy, I went to Berkley. You know how many assholes have told they had a dream?
Blacks aren't being treated equally? Duh, thank you Captain Obvious, look at the all the people who rally around you, getting worked up about your over-idealistic blither-blather. All your emotional rhetoric is just muddying the search for truth. Oh yeah, let's all hold hands and sing we're free at last. You'd like that, wouldn't you, hippie?
Let freedom ring? How exactly? What does that even MEAN??? What specific action should we take to achieve systemic change? I'm hearing a lot of hopes, a lot of dreams, but what I'm not hearing are suggestions for concrete action.
You have no political knowledge, so why don't you go have a seat at the kids table. Adults are questing for truth here. I don't give a shit about your venting.
Now, before you jump all over me, I obviously don't think Russell Brand's interview is anywhere near as important to this speech. I am merely establishing that passionate speeches that don't say anything new, can change the world.
Something Brand and MLK do have in common, is that they believe that a great deal of a change has to come to within. And if you want to change people's beliefs and values, you can't just reason them out of it. It wasn't reason that created those beliefs in the first place. No, you have to access your emotions. You have to stir them up. You have to motivate them to change themselves.
Brand may be far less important, but he certainly has stirred people up in his own small way.