Wednesday, October 14, 2009

National Review: Rush Limbaugh=Martin Luther King Jr.

The Corner:


In the 1970s, I went to a highly integrated, all-boys high school (Cardinal Hayes) in the Bronx. It was one of the best experiences in my life, and I had great friendships with all manner of guys, because from the first day they treated us like we were all "Hayesmen" — not white guys, black guys, Spanish guys, Chinese guys, etc. We were encouraged to see each other as peers, not tribesmen. Of course there was intra-group affinity along ethnic and racial lines — there always is. But there wasn't a lot of tension. There was some — again, there always is — but there was no special treatment and no pressure for enforced separateness. We laughed at each other's expense (ethnic and racial jokes were not cause for banishment from society back then) and competed on a level playing field of merit. Everyone was treated like he belonged, if you did something good it was yours, and if you screwed up it was on you, not your heritage.

That's how Rush treats people — in the Martin Luther King aspiration that the content of one's character is what matters, not the color of one's skin. Yet, in the media narrative, he's somehow the one who's got a race issue — and the guys who trade on race, live and breathe it 24/7, are held up as our public conscience. The Left calls this "progress." I call it perversion.


Sure, it's disgraceful to compare a hedonistic, racist junkie to King, but it also represents progress. Here's what National Review used to say about Dr. King:



"For years now, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates have been deliberately undermining the foundations of internal order in this country. With their rabble-rousing demagoguery, they have been cracking the “cake of custom” that holds us together. With their doctrine of “civil disobedience,” they have been teaching hundreds of thousands of Negroes — particularly the adolescents and the children — that it is perfectly alright to break the law and defy constituted authority if you are a Negro-with-a-grievance; in protest against injustice. And they have done more than talk. They have on occasion after occasion, in almost every part of the country, called out their mobs on the streets, promoted “school strikes,” sit-ins, lie-ins, in explicit violation of the law and in explicit defiance of the public authority. They have taught anarchy and chaos by word and deed — and, no doubt, with the best of intentions — and they have found apt pupils everywhere, with intentions not of the best. Sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind."

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