In the midst of this 50th Anniversary march, I've noticed that conservatives/GOP types take either one of two tacks. The first one is the, "hey, it's a new America now. Race shouldn't mean ANYTHING". The other is the, "You know what? MLK and all those civil rights folks were actually conservatives if you think about it, unlike the modern day black democrats."
The example of the first situation can be seen by Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post. She wants a colorless America. Implicit in reasoning like this is that there is no more institutional discrimination or race issues in the country. Second of all, when people advocate for a 'colorless' or hyphenless America, aren't they really advocating for an America that really defaults to the Anglo-Saxon WASP ideal? It was easier for Irish and Germans 100 years ago to blend in than it is for Indians or Koreans or Blacks to blend in right now. That's just a fact.
Then you have Erik Ericksson at Redstate who insists that because MLK was a devout Christian, that he's really conservative. That's just one example, but I've seen many conservatives latch onto the 'personal responsibility' and 'individuality' thing to claim ownership of the values of the Civil Rights. But conservatives always forget that civil rights leaders spoke out against racism and bigotry, were big on the community and the social welfare of our brother s and sisters. Surely they'd have recoiled from hyper-individualism?
They try this trick all the time with that GOP is the 'party of Lincoln' nonsense. Anyway, what is it about 'race' that drives conservatives into a frenzy or into total irrationality?
Has ANY relatively mainstream right-leaning pundit ever discussed what the Right and political conservatives were doing in the 1950s/60s during the civil rights movement? (I ask out of ignorance).