On Monday, outside of the Manhattan courthouse where ex-Marine Daniel Penny was acquitted of manslaughter in the death of drug-addled psychotic and career criminal Jordan Neely, a host of perpetually aggrieved individuals howled for vengeance disguised as “justice” against Penny. “And people who keep asking, ‘Are we going to riot? Are we going to protest?’” said an unidentified woman who claimed she was the co-founder of the New York chapter of Black Lives Matter. “Is that what’s needed? Do glass have to break? Do cars have to burn for a black man to get justice in America?’ We can show out with peace. We can show out with facts. We can show with evidence and witness after witness. You give us nothing, and then you ask us to love this country.” Another even nastier activist going by the name Hawk Newsome was even more vitriolic… We need some black vigilantes. People wanna jump up and choke us and kill us for being loud? How about we do the same when they attempt to oppress us? What brought on this avalanche of threats and recriminations? You already know. Neely, a homeless drug addict who had either a fatal or near-fatal dose of fentanyl in his system and who had made a practice of assaulting and harassing subway riders in New York — with over 40 arrests on his record — was up to his usual tricks using a subway car as a stage but in the wrong place at the wrong time. He announced that he was prepared to kill someone if he wasn’t supplied with a modicum of money from his fellow riders, and that jail was hardly a deterrent to his demands. So Penny confronted him and after a short struggle, he held him in a chokehold until Neely finally calmed down. But by then, given the drugs in his system and his inability to demonstrate he was no longer a threat to his fellow riders, Neely expired. Nobody wanted Jordan Neely to die unless it was Neely, who led an awful, squalid, disgraceful life and left the world as a pristine example of how not to exist within it. But by any reasonable interpretation, Daniel Penny did the right thing in intervening and protecting his fellow man in that subway car, and Neely’s death was accidental. If he had calmed down sooner, something it seems he couldn’t do because of the drugs in his system, Penny could have let him go and he’d still be alive. But he didn’t. And the Black Lives Matter of the world saw an opportunity in Jordan Neely’s death. So they raised hell and demanded “justice” for a drug-addled psychopath who lived a life in the gutter as a threat to everyone around him. Daniel Penny was branded a Klansman, a racist, a Nazi, and a villain, and New York City’s utterly embarrassing District Attorney Alvin Bragg put him on trial for Neely’s death. That case finally fell apart when it got to the jury. Despite a chorus of threats, both explicit and implied, the jurors refused to buckle to the BLM mob and set Penny free. And that touched off the unrest of the mob. But do you know what else it touched off? A wave of joy across the country. Most Americans understand that had Daniel Penny been convicted of protecting his fellow subway riders, the effect would have been to turn the American commons over to street criminals and other lowlifes. And rather than a Daniel Penny stepping forward to protect the innocent from a chaotic threat in the person of a man no longer possessing reason or behavioral discipline, the new standard would become those Philadelphia residents who, faced with a group of thugs gang-raping a woman on a SEPTA train, merely took out their cell phones to film the incident. The latter incident horrified many. Why wouldn’t anyone help that poor woman in Philadelphia? The Penny case was why. Given that Larry Krasner, the district attorney in Philadelphia, hails from the same George Soros/Defund The Police school that Bragg does, it’s entirely reasonable to process a threat like the one Neely posed and say that it’s better not to get involved. This is what the “Civil Rights” era has come to. And this is why the “Civil Rights” era is over. When you are somehow akin to James Earl Ray for standing up to street criminals on subways, we are no longer in a place where “justice” is being sought. There is a reason the BLM crowd kept saying of George Floyd that he should rest not in peace, but in power. Power was what the entire Black Lives Matter movement was all about. These aren’t people trying to redeem America. They’re hell-bent on destroying it. And not just America, by the way, but the entire concept of Western civilization, from its moral code to its culture to its economics and especially to its politics. Black Lives Matter is the end stage of the civil rights movement. It’s what you get when all the real battles against racism have been fought and won. When the “civil rights” crowd features grifters like Ibram X. Kendi who openly calls for “discrimination” as the answer for past discrimination, the shark has been jumped. Is New York a racist city? Almost certainly the answer is yes, but the racists are the Hawk Newsomes. What Daniel Penny did was not a racist act, it was an act of love for his fellow man. It was an act of protection. And, the argument for his imprisonment is that Penny should have pulled out his phone and recorded Neely as he assaulted, battered, or killed the people he was threatening. Because that’s what a post-Western civilization in New York looks like, and it’s the dystopian hellscape the “civil rights” crusaders of Black Lives Matter prefer to the declining status quo. Not surprisingly, that argument convinced no one. So instead Hawk Newsome called for violence. Because violence is the necessary harbinger of the end of civilization. There is no defending this. There is only a step — or several steps, if not a marathon — back from the brink. I’m going to say that while there will be other cases, whether like Penny’s ordeal or that of Kyle Rittenhouse or Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis cop unlucky enough to be in contact with George Floyd as he expired from his own fentanyl overdose (in a fair trial, rather than the mob-inspired kangaroo court Chauvin was subjected to, he would also have been acquitted in Floyd’s death), the terror of Black Lives Matter and the grift of the “civil rights” figures who came before them will not recover from this. America has had it with the nonstop racial pyromania of people whose bad faith is unquestionable. The Al Sharptons, the Benjamin Crumps, the Kendis, and the Hawk Newsomes have had their day, and that grift is over. An expanding number of black people, particularly black men, are becoming Republicans very largely as a repudiation of their antics. And an expanding number of people of other races are making it plain that they will not be cowed by threats and name-calling. Finally, we’re coming to a place of reason. The “civil rights” era, which has perfectly encapsulated the old Eric Hoffer quote that “every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” is now obviously a racket. And a shabby one at that. We can celebrate its legitimate triumphs and the ways it made our country more equitable and just. But now we can also recognize its obsolescence and abuses. Daniel Penny is free, as he should be free. And we are free to be equal citizens under the law without fear of the mob. It’s a new dawn in America, one which is long overdue. READ MORE from Scott McKay: The Old Game Continues Among the Worst GOP Senators Robert Reich’s Ravings Against Musk Are Pure Lunacy Well, Then, by All Means, Let’s Put Hunter Under Oath Now The post The ‘Civil Rights’ Era Is Over. Good Riddance To It. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.