Funeral failed to highlight King’s character
Published 12:00 am Friday, February 10, 2006
In a tear-streaked story in the New York Times bemoaning the inability of the Democrats to exploit what they see as the GOP’s many weaknesses and use them to win back control of Congress in this year’s congressional elections, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn) sobbed that the health of his far-left Democratic Party is “A lot worse than it should be. This has not been a very good two months.”
“We seem to be losing our voice when it comes to the basic things people worry about,” Dodd said.
Senator Dodd, along with the outraged liberals who now dominate his party, is dead wrong; it’s not their voice they are losing, it’s their minds.
The hate goes on. They cannot hold themselves back, even at a funeral for someone like Coretta Scott King. It’s interesting that her late husband Dr. Martin Luther King talked about content of character, yet some of those who spoke at the funeral; displayed no character at all.
If anybody doubts that they need only to look at her funeral, a solemn occasion turned into a rabid hate fest by the likes of former President Carter and the Rev. Joseph Lowery. It sounded more like a Democrat Party rally than a rite meant to celebrate the life of the widow of the late Rev. Martin Luther King.
Listen to the Rev. Lowery as he stood to pay honor to the deceased window of the civil rights hero and instead shifts from praise of the deceased to political hate talk: “She extended Martin’s message against poverty, racism and war. She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar. We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there,” he ranted.
Incredibly, that bit of Democrat propaganda got him a two-minute standing ovation from the obviously partisan mourners. And that standing ovation had nothing to do with the woman they were supposed to be honoring.
Having whipped up the partisan rancor among the huge congregation he fed them more raw meat from the hate locker and went on to say “But Coretta knew, and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of President Bush. “For war, billions more, but no more for the poor!” The crowd again went wild.
Former President Carter also attacked the president who had come to honor Mrs. King and stayed to be a target of liberal rage. Speaking of the Kings, he swerved into the anger lane, saying: “It was difficult for them personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretaps,” an obvious allusion to the Presidents terrorist monitoring program which blithely ignored the fact that the wiretapping of the Kings was ordered by then-attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, a liberal Democrat.
He then added that Hurricane Katrina showed that all are not yet equal in America.
“This commemorative ceremony this morning, this afternoon, is not only to acknowledge the great contributions of Coretta and Martin, but to remind us that the struggle for equal rights is not over. We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi,” Carter said. “Those who were most devastated by [Hurricane] Katrina know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans. It is our responsibility to continue their crusade.”
Contrast this with what President George W. Bush, had to say. Noting that Mrs. King had chosen to fight on for racial equality even after her husband’s assassination, when she would have been justified in retiring from public life he said “Americans knew her husband only as a young man,” Bush said. “We knew Mrs. King in all the seasons of her life. And there was beauty and dignity in every season.”
He added, “By going forward with a strong and forgiving heart, Coretta Scott King not only secured her husband’s legacy, she built her own. Having loved a leader, she became a leader.”
The only person the funeral who fully displayed Dr. King’s “content of character,” was the man most slandered there: George W. Bush.
Mike Reagan, the eldest son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network.