Donald Trump’s feud with civil rights icon John Lewis is highlighting the president-elect’s willingness to attack any and all political rivals even with his inauguration less than a week away.
The Republican billionaire slammed the Democratic congressman — and his Atlanta-area district — on Saturday, a day after Lewis described Trump as an illegitimate president. Lewis, like a handful of Democratic lawmakers, vowed to skip Trump’s Friday swearing-in ceremony.
Trump tweeted that Lewis “should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results.”
…Lewis is among the most revered leaders of the civil rights movement and devoted his life to promoting equal rights for African-Americans. He suffered a fractured skull while leading the march in Selma, Alabama more than a half century ago.
This whole incident reminds you of how militant and intolerant the Democratic Party has become. Rep. John Lewis called Trump an “illegitimate president” who’s only in office, he claims, because of Russian hacking. Trump naturally slammed back and defended himself. And for this reason alone Trump is (yet again) branded a racist.
Welcome to the world of Democrats, President-elect Trump. In their world, racism does not refer to hatred of any particular race. It refers to dissenting opinion of any kind.
One might ask how the party and movement of Martin Luther King got to this point. Well, if we’re honest about it, such a development was inevitable. While Martin Luther King had eloquent points to make, the fact remains that the civil rights movement, even in its day, was never an individual rights movement.
The civil rights movement did not primarily seek to extend the rights of the individual equally to the whole population (black and white alike). That was, however, part of the impact of the movement, to its credit. But the civil rights movement always was more about collectivism and socialism than it was about individualism, individual rights and economic freedom. It wasn’t about upholding individual rights under the Constitution; it was about “social justice,” something intended to take us beyond the Constitution. So-called social justice has less to do with the Constitution than it has to do with the ideas and practices of people like Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky, a Communist radical who influenced both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
That’s why it didn’t take long for the civil rights movement to morph into the pressure group warfare of the economic left. The left, then and now, does not define equality as being equal under the law. Instead, the concept of equal individual rights was replaced by the goal of equal outcome. Until or unless all people have the same amount of wealth and income, it’s proof of racism, according to the unstated (sometimes openly stated) premises of this view. As a result, what started out as some eloquent thinking on the part of Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement about peaceful resistance degenerated into the petty, demanding, entitled and freebie-demanding gang of political hacks who now comprise the Democratic Party establishment.
That’s one reason why people like Rep. John Lewis, whom we’re supposed to accept uncritically because of his race along with his past association with Martin Luther King, scream “victim” when nobody victimized them at all, and when they, in fact, are the ones who pick the fights. That’s precisely what happened between Lewis and Donald Trump over the last several days.
If you doubt what I’m saying, imagine the ensuing hysteria bordering on martial law if a member of the Republican Party had called Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton (had she won) an “illegitimate” occupant of the White House.
Sadly, it’s just more evidence of how the division in American politics and government is increasingly unsustainable. It’s like a bad marriage, and regardless of who’s in the White House, we honestly can’t go on like this for much longer.
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