Rodney King

The past is prologue, but can we learn from it to avoid repetition?

The maxim “History does not repeat itself but it often rhymes” may be one of the truest statements (whoever said it) ever made about history. This is likely because history is made in response to people’s ideas. Once people believe ideas, they tend to orient their lives to living by those ideas. Since many bad ideas run through history, the same activities tend to show up over and over again. The 2020 Black Lives Matter riots are very eerily similar to something that happened in the past. Here is what Rush had to say.

“The biggest problem with the reaction of these people is that they are viewing these riots as a social rather than a criminal problem. To say that these murders, arsons, robberies, and assaults were caused by social inequities, rather than say they  were committed by criminals, is inexcusable. Civilized people don’t behave the way these rioters, looters, and murderers did. When I watched the riots on TV I didn’t see the faces of rage. I saw glee on the faces of hoodlums who were kicking and beating people to death, burning properties, and looting businesses. People appeared to be enjoying the opportunity to wreak havoc on society, without fear of reprisal by law enforcement, which was noticeably absent.

What we have here is liberal pandering at its most disgusting level. In true form, they refuse to place blame on those who are responsible.”[1]

That sounds like a stinging indictment of the Black Lives Matter movement, doesn’t it? Rush bringing his usual keen wisdom to cut through the static and expose what is really going on under the surface. Except it is not about Black Lives Matter. In fact, it predates the 2020 rioting by nearly thirty years. Rush wrote this, not about the Black Lives Matter rioting, but about the rioting after the trial of the police officers accused of excessively beating Rodney King, a black man.