50 Years After The March 

Periodically, I recommend things you should read with your children and grandchildren, such as Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address or Ronald Reagan's "Evil Empire" speech. Since it is in the news, I would also recommend Reverend Martin Luther King's speech at the Lincoln Memorial 50 years ago, as well as his "Letter from a Birmingham jail." 

This weekend, there was a major celebration marking the 50th anniversary of Reverend King's "I have a Dream" speech. Sadly, if media reports are accurate, there was little said from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that was of much value. It was as if the speakers had collectively been asleep for the last 50 years and had not noticed that most of the legal discrimination that infected America then had since been obliterated. 

With a black man twice elected president, a black attorney general, a black Supreme Court justice, a black man representing the state of South Carolina in the United States Senate, it would seem there was much to celebrate. Instead you heard a litany of leftist demands and demagoguery of the first order. 

The Trayvon Martin case was invoked as proof that blacks continue to be gunned down because of the color of their skin. 

Some speakers attacked voter ID laws, suggesting that conservative governors and state legislators are leading us back to the era of Jim Crow. Such rhetoric is disgusting and blatantly false. (See next item.)

The sponsor of Rhode Island's voter ID law is a black Democrat. In fact, voter participation among blacks exceeded that of whites for the first time in history during the 2012 elections. 

But in keeping with the spirit of the day, the Washington Post ran an editorial asking what Reverend King might be marching for if he were still alive today. You guessed it -- according to the Post the Baptist pastor would be fighting for gay rights and abortion. 

Here's what I think Reverend King, if he were alive today, would be focusing his efforts on: 

He would demand that black men fulfill their responsibilities to the women they impregnate and the children they create. 

Far from promoting Planned Parenthood's agenda, Reverend King would expose its racist roots and point out that it deliberately locates abortion facilities in inner city communities. He would weep at that fact, which has resulted in more than 20 million aborted black babies, a death toll the KKK could not reach in its most deranged dreams. 

King would pound his fists on the podium, demanding that black youths stop killing each other. And I think he would have the courage to condemn the kind of racially-inspired violence we have seen in Oklahoma and Washington, where young blacks brutally murdered defenseless white victims. 

I believe King would lead the charge against an educational establishment that will do anything to defeat school choice so that poor families cannot get their children out of failing schools that are a national embarrassment. 

And last but not least, I think Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., would be mortified that the God he regularly appealed to as the basis for racial equality (since God made us black and white in His image) is now routinely stripped out of the public square by the very liberals who routinely try to claim King's mantle. 

Liberal Media Distortions 

Just as it was with the Trayvon Martin/Christopher Lane murders, the coverage of voter ID laws demonstrates the propaganda power of America's leftist Big Media establishment. 

Almost every day, millions of us are being told that mainstream legislators are trying to take America back to the days when minorities could not vote. In fact the threat is so serious that the Obama Justice Department is suing the state of Texas. 

Why is that? A number of states are trying to pass a simple requirement: Present a photo ID to vote. And these states are even doing extraordinary things to make that requirement easy to fulfill. 

Americans overwhelmingly support voter ID laws. And they overwhelmingly reject the left's attempt to demagogue the issue. A July 2012 Rasmussen poll found that 73% of Americans rejected the notion that asking someone to show a photo ID to vote amounted to discrimination. 

Like many conservatives, I am often infuriated by former Florida Congressman Joe Scarborough. But he was absolutely right this morning when he repeatedly challenged Politico's Mike Allen to explain why the left keeps equating voter ID with racism. Watch the exchange here. And notice the curious silence of Scarborough's liberal co-host Mika Brzezinski.