Who Has Really Hijacked the Civil Rights Movement?

The so-called mainstream media looked down at the Glenn Beck rally at the Lincoln Memorial last weekend through predictable lenses set on their very long noses.

What interested me, though, was the charge by speakers at the other rally at Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., the one led by Al Sharpton, that Beck and company have “hijacked the civil rights movement.” Now there is a subject worthy of debate.

Let’s see now...

- Liberal Democrats keep African-American poor children locked inside underperforming schools, thus hijacking their futures.

- The number of births to single African-American young women in Washington is well over 50 percent, hijacking family.

- How often have we heard that more black men are in jail than in college, hijacking hope.

- Trillions have been spent on anti-poverty programs, yet there seem as many poor people as when the Great Society began in the Johnson years. That’s hijacked their economic freedom.

Conservatives talk about empowering the individual; liberals talk about groups and more power to the state. Who are the real hijackers of the civil rights movement? People like Al sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Eleanor Holmes Norton.

I’ll take the inspiring rhetoric of Martin Luther King’s niece, Alveeda King and Rev. C.L. Jackson at the Beck rally over more of the same rhetoric that helps no one.

Keep hope alive!

Cal Thomas is America’s most widely syndicated newspaper columnist and a Fox News contributor.
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