A Dream Derailed

Richard Epstein writes an article over at Defining Ideas, talking about the failures of the modern civil rights movement.  Mainly because the civil rights movement of the '60s and '70s was so effective, the problem these days isn't government sponsored racism, but government sponsored dependency.  The focus these days seems to be on things that we've already solved.  Jim Crow died several decades ago, but the civil rights leaders of today want to keep giving him CPR, rather than just let him die.

The current inheritors of King’s civil rights movement never think beyond the illusory direct benefits to their favored short-term target, ignorant of the powerful pressures that chew up their social agenda. Rather than looking hard at their own programs, they tragically work to resurrect the moral outrage of 1963.

Those days should be past us.  The leaders of today's civil rights movement certainly don't have any moral authority and the outrage they try to spark is a pale reflection of genuine racial authority.  When they get their "short in a wad" over voting rights, we all look around and know (with a great deal of evidence) that the problem with voting today isn't voter suppression, but voter fraud mostly generated by the Democratic Party.  Jim Crow is dead and we should let his memory die along with him.

Of course, I agree with Instapundit, who says,

If Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are the grand old men of your movement, you’ve got a lousy movement.

Indeed.