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Be prepared for a repeat of the 24/7 MSM propaganda machine cranking out shows canonizing Coretta Scott King, as they did with Rosa Parks a few months ago. Her funeral service will probably be treated by the MSM like those of Princess Diana or Pope John Paul II. Be prepared for white liberal elitists like Ted Kennedy, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Al Gore to make a pilgrimage to Atlanta, with sad, tearful faces. Rest assured that the Clintons will not doze off during the funeral service, as they did at President Reagan's funeral.

What will be worse than the blatant liberal exploitation of Mrs. King's death will be those who say they are conservative doing their own version of the long, sad faces and crocodile tears. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s addressed longstanding grievances of blacks against state sponsored segregation and routine unfairness and nastiness on the part of the white majority, especially in the South. (It is well to remember that the segregated South was solidly Democratic, with the socialistic New Deal and other "big government" movements like Populism having wide audiences in that region.) However, the civil rights movement was the impetus for a massive expansion of Federal power, to the detriment of property rights, freedom of association, and states rights.

For over 40 years. the NAACP and other organizations that came into prominence during the height of the civil rights movement have been staunch supporters of every incremental expansion of Federal power, especially in the social arena. Yet they have also been firm opponents of military strength, foreign policy focused on this nation's interests, and effective punishment of convicted criminals. Affirmative action, sensitivity training, multiculturalism, and "hate crimes" laws are among the long term results of the civil rights movement.

American conservatism is not New Deal and Great Society policies and big government minus abortion rights, pornography on demand, and homosexual "marriage". Rather, it is rooted in the philosophy of limited government and individual liberty embodied in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The civil rights movement became a strong advocate of centralized and unlimited government power, with the goal of radical egalitarianism at the expense of personal freedom. No one who calls himself a conservative should give honor to this movement on the occasion of the death of the wife of its most important leader.