As if there was any question about the integrity of Reverend Jesse Jackson’s character, he now has the dubious distinction of being the civil rights leader who was too much for Yale.
These days Jackson represents everything that is wrong with modern day civil rights causes, and progressive politics in general. Forty years ago advocates of civil rights were fighting for equality under the laws, and for all peoples to be judged “by the content of their character,” as Thomas Sowell pointed out in his syndicated column last week and as Jesse Jackson reiterated for us this week, many of our generation’s civil rights leaders simply cannot afford to be judged by the content of their character.
Civil rights leaders used to be unifying, too. Everyone dreams of a day when they won’t be judged by the color of their skin or their name or religion. Everyone wants to be judged by the content of their character; but not everyone is willing to exploit the multitudes of special interest legislation that creates codified, compensatory class structures. And that’s the problem with the civil rights movement today: it’s not about civil rights anymore, it’s about special interests.
The line between justice and special interest was crossed when groups like Mr. Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition stopped seeking equality under the law and tolerance as a unifying virtue they started seeking excess capital for their own coffers through the extortion of businesses that rely on large numbers of impressionable minorities. If progressives seek to blame a group for the exploitation of minorities, they needn’t bother the bourgeoisie; they need to look no further than the Democratic National Committee, including Rainbow/PUSH. No groups have made more empty, unreasonable and unjust offers to an embittered class than the American left, all for the sake of votes.
You can sling racism at republicans, contempt at conservatives, or intransigence at individualists, but consider the alternatives first. If any group is held down in this country, it’s not by the oppressive right wing, but by the regressive left wing.
No one has ever told a person that they could not succeed so many times that they actually believed they couldn’t.
Even the Ivy League is beginning to realize it. On Labor Day, Jesse Jackson was arrested at Yale University for disorderly conduct, which entailed standing in an intersection blocking traffic and students for the noble cause of “more money.” More pay used to be the job of collective bargaining, and union negotiation. When Yale offers 3 to 5 percent pay increases, benefit increases and back pay for the money the workers might have had if they received their raises at the expiration of the last contract, civil disobedience is in order. Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul: Jackson was preventing the next generation of liberal politicians and extortionist, Howard Dean’s daughter included, from attending their classes, all the while Dean demonstrated to every freshman at Yale that when you don’t get what you want, pout and scream until you do.
Otherwise the anti-Vietnam hippies won’t send their kids to your school.
What a world we live in, when lawlessness is a virtue; I can hardly wait for the elite left wing to begin slamming Yale for trying to allow their students to attend classes.
