Martin Luther King’s Conservative Principles

Martin Luther King Day has arrived once again, and like clockwork, liberals are invoking King’s name to support their causes.

In an e-mail to activists, Obama’s former “green czar,” Van Jones, calls King the “original Occupier.” He urges activists to use MLK day meet-ups to energize left-wing campaigning for 2012.

Despite these efforts, conservatives should not surrender King’s legacy to the left.

If you are younger than about, oh, 45, you weren’t even alive when Dr. King was murdered. I was standing in front of a truck bed in Indianapolis in April when Bobby Kennedy spoke to a large crowd of (mostly) black people about Dr. King’s death, and that of his own brother, as well. I’d driven down with other staffers after helping to organize a huge rally for RFK on the Ball State University campus in Muncie, IN, earlier that day.

I have long believed that Martin Luther King would have been appalled at what has been done in his name, especially in efforts to turn certain parts of the black demographic into a culturally and financially dependent appendage of the leftist project in America.