Perpetually stuck in a time warp, progressives habitually misconstrue the societal dynamics of 1963 with those of 2015 – the legitimate Civil Rights movement with illegitimate Occupy movement rabble-rousing and more recently Black Lives Matter thuggery.  The reality of the first black president cooling his heels for seven years now in the Oval Office is case and point.  As the black race constitutes only 13% of the U.S. population, the fact remains that it was white votes that propelled Mr. Obama's ascendancy to the highest office in the land not once, but twice.  This was the fulfillment of MLK's "dream" – a circumstance frankly unimaginable to anyone in 1963.  It was done as a symbol of cultural healing, in good faith and with the best intentions.

Mr. Obama has responded by wrecking the joint – most notably the economy, with 8 trillion dollars (and counting) in added national debt, wasted stimulus funneled to political donors, and Obamacare (socialized medicine) bureaucracy that will burn though $1 trillion a year.  Indeed, his tax-and-spend policies have caused corporate inversion, the mass exodus of capital and jobs overseas, 93 million Americans pushed out of the workforce, and 1 out of 7 (45.5 million) Americans on food stamps.  Law is flagrantly disregarded by Mr. Obama, in clear violation of his oath of office.  Furthermore, every mass killing on a school campus and/or death of a black person by a police officer or a white perpetrator (regardless of mitigating circumstances) is utilized by him to promote the fiction that America is still a racist country à la 1963.

Well, to bring progressives kicking and screaming 53 years back to the future to 2015, to be black in America, by comparison to 1963, is quite beautiful.  Indeed, progressives abetted by the MSM wholly disregard the widespread advances toward equal treatment of minorities in favor of magnifying isolated tragedies in order to politically demonize whole groups like cops, conservatives, and the white race – in short, anyone who is not a Democrat.

While life circumstances for every American are not perfectly equal (and realistically never will be due to human nature), where are Democrat Bull Connor's cops brandishing batons and attack dogs, barring the schoolhouse doors to advancement in 2015?  Where are the firefighters of today spraying down nonviolent protesters as in 1963?  How can any clear-thinking person equate 2015 society with 1963's?  Specifically, MLK's calculated decision to stage his protest in Birmingham, Ala. – a racial hot spot – was to bring needed attention to actual discrimination in America at the time.  What he said and did then has no relationship to Black Lives Matter "protesters," who make false claims and utter inflaming words that caused the violent uprisings in Ferguson, Mo. and Baltimore, Md.  Would MLK, a minister, have used bald-faced lies for a "greater" political end?  Would he have approved of the Black Lives Matter advocacy of the unprovoked assassination of police?

Perhaps the best measure of the difference between America of 2015 and 1963 can be gleaned from the reticent and restrained response of police to Black Lives Matter malfeasance and aggression.  Indeed, that nonviolent reaction is something MLK would have instantly recognized and respected.  Furthermore, as a proponent of individual character, MLK would not have used broad strokes to prematurely condemn cops before all the facts are known, as Mr. Obama did.  Likewise, he would have recognized the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, and Michael Brown as what they are: isolated, unfortunate incidents not indicative of a general undercurrent of racism in Mr. Obama's America.  In this, Democrats and their MSM supporters often create and hide behind political bogeymen so as not to have to contend with "real" problems like those mentioned above.

MLK and the Civil Rights protest movement were about Christian fairness and truth.  However, only a superficial analysis would conclude that Black Lives Matter is similar when it is actually the Civil Rights movement's antithesis: built on lies and misrepresentations of events not reflective of the much improved treatment of blacks by whites.  In any case, when protest veers into violence and criminality (like property destruction), it has no justification and no place in 1963 or 2015.

David L. Hunter is on Twitter and blogs at davidlhunter.blogspot.com.  He has been published multiple times in The Washington Post, The Washington Times, and FrontPage Mag, and extensively in the Canada Free Press and American Thinker.