For the last several week, Glenn Beck has been hammering away at the theme that Tea Party activists must become the new leaders of civil rights movement because they are being discriminated against, persecuted, and denied equal protection under the law by a biased and corrupt government. And he is entirely serious, claiming that even while they are becoming the victims of KKK-like intimidation, they will eventually be the force that saves this nation.

Yesterday, Beck flew to Washington, DC for the anti-IRS/anti-immigration Tea Party rally outside the Capitol where, as he explained on his television program last night, he delivered a speech explaining to the audience that “this is a civil rights movement; you may not understand it now, but believe me, you will.”

Calling upon the Tea Party to “start moving as a civil rights movement,” Beck announced that he is going to be working with Alveda King, the anti-gay, anti-abortion Religious Right activist niece of Martin Luther King, who will start teaching “classes that model exactly what her uncle Martin taught her to do.”

“We have to be willing to have the dogs be unleashed on us,” Beck declared, because “after what I saw today on the way they’re handling things at the Capitol, you’re not very far from having the same kind of oppression coming our way”: