Rick Moran has a great piece about the great actor who was larger than life on and off the screen, and who defied just about every stereotype about Hollywood -- because he was an individual who dared to think for himself:

....He marched with Martin Luther King and was a staunch supporter of civil rights. He opposed McCarthyism and racial segregation. He spoke out against gay-bashing and opposed the Vietnam War, believing Nixon was a disaster as president.

He supported liberal Democrats early in his Hollywood career including Johnson and Kennedy. It appears that as long as Heston was doing what was expected of him as a Hollywood liberal, he could do no wrong.

But like many Democrats in the late 1970's, Heston's allegiances to both liberalism and the party began to weaken. Once he began campaigning for more conservative positions on issues like gun control, affirmative action, and national defense, the left turned on him with a vengeance. He didn't formally change his party affiliation until 1987 but it was clear by the early Reagan years that Heston had abandoned the New Left and the Democrats.

But it was his stint as President of the National Rifle Association that garnered the most controversy....

People forget that Heston's staunch support for civil rights did not begin and end in the King era. Heston recognized that not only is the right to keep and bear arms (which is the right to self defense) paramount among civil rights, but it guarantees that the rest of our civil rights are possible.

All Americans are in his debt (including those who don't realize that the right of self-defense is a civil right that makes them safer).

Whenever I hear the expression "from my cold dead hands," I'll remember him fondly.