If Black Lives Matter proponents actually believed their own slogan, they'd applaud the 1994 crime bill and other tough-on-crime laws that played a critical role in reducing American crime rates over the past 20 years.

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Among the most grating myths in contemporary discourse is the persistent claim that Republicans and conservatives have drifted further and further toward extremist depths in recent years. 

The reality is today's conservatives advocate policies that wouldn't have seemed foreign to Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater.  In contrast, Democrats and liberals - pardon, "liberal" is now "progressive," just as "global warming" became "climate change" due to marketing headwinds -  have adopted extremist positions rejected even recently by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton themselves. 

Last week, we were treated to a vivid illustration of that reality in the person of former president Bill Clinton. 

More specifically, it was illustrated by a revealing confrontation in Philadelphia during which Clinton's speech on behalf of his wife was loudly and repeatedly interrupted by "Black Lives Matter" protestors.  In recent weeks, they have maligned Hillary for supporting the anti-crime law known as the "Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994" and referring at the time to criminals targeted by the bill as "super predators." 

Among other provisions, the law funded 100,000 new police officers, committed $10 billion to new prison construction, expanded the death penalty and targeted criminal gangs in particular.  It is worth noting that then-Senator Joe Biden supported the bill, as did Bernie Sanders as a Congressman from Vermont. 

And with good reason.  As noted by National Review's Rich Lowry, the United States had suffered an appalling three-decade rise in crime that finally demanded strong action: 

[B]etween 1960 and 1990, the United States experienced perhaps the worst crime wave in its history.  Violent crime increased more than 350 percent.  Across the 1960s, robbery rose 500 percent in cities with a population of a million.  It would be impossible for the political system not to respond vigorously to such a tide of disorder, especially when the criminal justice system was initially so inadequate to the task...  Subsequently, we readjusted, and it wasn't an exercise in quasi-white supremacy.  From 1976 to 2005, blacks were 47 percent of murder victims.  Bill Clinton's talk of kids wasn't just pulling at heartstrings.  During the crack epidemic in Washington, D.C., about 500 kids were shot and stabbed in a roughly two-year period.  Since their communities suffered so grievously from drug crime, black Democrats supported important legislative elements of the crackdown on drug offenses from the 1970s onward. 

Since the date that legislation passed, crime in the United States has plummeted.  The U.S. murder rate has declined by approximately 50%, most notably in areas of high minority population, and our violent crime rate stands below such places as Great Britain.  Although reasonable minds can differ regarding the precise impact of the 1994 crime bill, the fact is that its measures aimed toward prevention, incapacitation and deterrence played a substantial role. 

But that era of Clinton-style moderation in the Democratic Party, when he could tell a joint session of Congress and a national audience that "the era of big government is over," has passed.  No longer is bipartisan welfare reform under Clinton a Republican Congress en vogue.  Under Obama, welfare has nearly doubled, and his administration has reversed many of the reforms signed by Clinton.  Whereas Clinton actually cut capital gains taxes, Obama has increased those and other taxes at every opportunity.  Whereas Clinton cultivated Internet and telecommunications sector growth through a "light touch" regulatory approach at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Obama's FCC continually seeks to impose ObamaCare-style regulations upon it.  Other examples are innumerable. 

But Clinton apparently didn't get the memo, and today appears Republican in everything but formal registration.  Instead of placating the protestors, he justifiably scolded them: 

I like protesters, but the ones who won't let you answer are afraid of the truth.  I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders that got 13-year-old kids hopped-up on crack, and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children.  Maybe you thought they were good citizens, she didn't.  You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter.  Tell the truth!  You are defending the people who caused young people to go out and take guns, there was a 13-year-old girl in Washington, D.C., who was planning her own funeral. 

He was right.  If Black Lives Matter proponents actually believed their own slogan, they'd applaud the 1994 crime bill and other tough-on-crime laws that played a critical role in reducing American crime rates over the past 20 years. 

And they'd also offer Bill Clinton, whose presidency rings more Republican than Democrat in retrospect, an apology.