One of the problems facing the old civil rights establishment is an increasing lack of credibility.
Organizations like the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus are no longer devoted to civil rights but rather to 21st-century American liberalism. Their objective now is keeping dissenters – read: black conservatives – out of their organizations, instead of adapting to the positive changes that have taken place for blacks in American society and moving forward.
Amidst the results of this narrow and increasingly failed strategy, the real question is becoming this: If the traditional civil rights establishment is now standing up for liberalism and not civil rights, who, then, are America’s real 21st-century civil rights leaders?
The obvious answer is that the new civil rights establishment is composed of the increasing ranks of black conservatives. We’ve written in this space about Deneen Borelli as America’s new Rosa Parks. Sean Hannity has had not one but two shows documenting the rising black conservative movement, which have featured Borelli and many others, from the Reverend C.L. Bryant to Star Parker to David Webb.
But there is one other notable person who has stood up for the black community – and while’s he the most prominent conservative in the land, he isn’t black.
That would be, of course, Rush Limbaugh.
Nearby, in a column discussing one of the great unmentionables of the current Zimmerman case turmoil and the failure of the liberal civil rights establishment, we quoted from Rush’s show yesterday. In which he focused, both eloquently and with a sense of frustration, on the damage leftism has done to blacks in America. The irony is that if one goes back and reads Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech of 1963, Dr. King sounds like – Rush Limbaugh. Here’s a link to that speech in which Dr. King talks about, among other things, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – both of which are disdained by today’s modern liberals.
If someone gave Dr. King’s speech today – praising equality of opportunity, discussing the importance of being judged not by one’s skin color but by the content of one’s character – they would sound like…. Rush Limbaugh.
Which illustrates precisely how far the modern leadership of the civil rights establishment has fallen.
The fact of the matter is that America has changed for the better in terms of race.
The problem, and it is a severe problem, is that the American Left has so infected the civil rights movement – and for that matter academia, the media, religion, medicine, and the law – that Americans are looking for new leaders who both understand what has happened and are willing to stand up and do battle for freedom.
That’s exactly what Rush Limbaugh does every day.
More than qualifying him to be called America’s real civil rights leader.
