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Leftists like to call themselves 'progressives.' We can't begrudge them their self-appellation any more than we can begrudge the Randians their calling themselves 'objectivists.' Every person and every movement has the right to portray himself or itself favorably and self-servingly. "We are objective in our approach, unlike you mystics."
But if you are progressive, why are you stuck in the past when it comes to race? Progress has been made in this area; why then do you deny the progress that has been made? Why do you hanker after the old days? Why, Mr. President, do you go on about lynching?
It is a bit of a paradox: 'progressives' — to acquiesce for the moment in the use of this self-serving moniker — routinely accuse conservatives of wanting to 'turn back the clock,' on a number of issues such as abortion. But they do precisely that themselves on the question of race relations. They apparently yearn for the bad old Jim Crow days of the 1950s and '60s when they had truth and right on their side and the conservatives of those days were either wrong or silent or simply uncaring. Those great civil rights battles were fought and they were won, in no small measure due to the help of whites including whites such as Charlton Heston whom the Left later vilified. (In this video clip Heston speaks out for civil rights.) Necessary reforms were made. But then things changed and the civil rights movement became a hustle to be exploited for fame and profit and power by the likes of the race baiters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
Read almost any race screed at The Nation and similar lefty sites and you will find endless references to slavery and lynchings and Jim Crow as if these things are still with us. You will read the brazen lie about how Trayvon Martin is a latter-day Emmett Till et cetera ad nauseam.
For a race-hustler like Jesse Jackson, It Is Always Selma Again. Brothers Jesse and Al and Co. are stuck inside of Selma with the Oxford blues again.
In case you missed the allusions, they are to Bob Dylan's 1962 Freewheelin' Bob Dylan track, Oxford Town and his 1966 Blonde on Blonde track, Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.
Wake up you 'progressive' Rip van Winkles! It is not 1965 any more.