Redstate

Have you seen the recent Sen Byrd ad on liberal sites though blogdas? The ad is Byrd asking for a doantion to defend his senate seat.

It's a flash ad that cycles though a few screens: "Protecting Your Freedom" ... "Defending the Constitution" ... "Preserving Checks & Balanaces" ... "Byrd" ... "Now He Needs Your Help" ... then it goes to a picture of Byrd looking like Death himself with the caption "Byrd. Click here to Support an AMERICAN HERO" (emphasis in ad)

I about fell over when I saw that "American hero" line. How can somebody with his racist history be an American hero? And how could somebody call himself an American hero? That is so unlike one.

Here's a diary that I wrote back in January, my second diary ever here at RedState. My Grandfather was involved with the Klan back in West Virginia where I grew up. He was recruited into the Klan by Byrd back then.

A couple of Gramp's recollections square pretty well with Byrd's:  

However a couple of things don't square at all with what I was told of my family history:

Here's the Washington Post take on the book.  One note in that caught my eye. Byrd talks of delivering a flower arrangement in the shape of a white cross to a fellow member killed in a duel. Flowers in the shape of a white cross were the usual flower arrangement for any ex Klansman who died. Back in the 70's that was a fairly common for a Church funeral to have lots of white crosses at certain funerals. To those who didn't know the code it just seemed like a coincidence that lots of people bought the same arrangement. Indeed when my Grandfather died in 1988 he received a couple of them after not being active for nearly 40 years.

One note of caution: What I gathered about this whole situation was from a series of conversations I had with my Grandfather after I found out an old family secret. Is it possible that a Grandfather would soften his role and indeed the role of the Klan when telling his grandson about a time he wasn't proud of? My guess is yes. Is it approximately true?  My guess is yes there, too.

if any white republican/former klansman tried to print that tripe, the DNC and the MSM would be all over them for it.

I didn't realize that the Klan was just another Kiwanis club-gee who knew?

I give Senator Byrd mild approval for at least mentioning his Klan involvement in his book.  However, being a member of a non-violent chapter (assuming that's true) of an often violent but always racist organization doesn't excuse it.

It's something that simply cannot be expunged from the record of his life and career.

I didn't realize that the Klan was just another Kiwanis club-gee who knew?

You just don't know enough about the ugly history of the South prior to say, oh, 1965

and my uncle and my dad didn't have to join the Klan to get their Optometry practice going in the 1950's and 1960's.  

Sorry, it is a bogus excuse.  The Klan was well known at that point for doing some pretty dispicable things-even if Byrd didn't join in on any lynchings or cross burnings, he certainly knew they happened-kind of hard to miss that little tidbit.

when i first saw it because it was so ridiculous, but then i saw the paid for by...

for Byrd, then what about all those racist, segregationist Democrats who in the 1960s became, ahem, REPUBLICANS?

I don't seem to remember anyone on the right talking about how bad it was that so many Republican politicians genuflect to successor organizations to the Klan, like the CCC.  Trent Lott and others on the right think the CCC are fine, upstanding gentlemen.  I don't seem to recall anyone joining the criticism of Charles Pickering being a member of the CCC and otherwise acting like a racist for most of his life.

Most amusingly, I don't recall any criticism at all, none, of Strom Thurmond.  Remember him?  That Dixiecrat guy who got Trent Lott in so much trouble?  He was a Democrat, then he was a Republican, and, to his credit, gave up (some) of his avowed racism later in life.  If Byrd is subject to attack, what about Thurmond?  And so mny others like him?

Byrd has long since repented of the racist views he held over 50 years ago.  You may not agree with his politics, but you can't seriously contend that he holds racist views today.  What would you have him do now?  Quit?

If that's the case, then every southern Republican who switched parties in the 1960s and 70s has to go too, because the reason they switched parties wasn't because they liked elephants better than donkeys -- it was because national Democrats stood for civil rights against the southern segregationists.  So the racists switched parties.  We call them Republicans today.

"Rather I should die a thousand times, and see [my nation's banner] trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels."

Reading that passage I would likely think it to have been written an Al-Qaeda operative or a racist hate monger rather than an esteemed US Senator well known for his love of all voters, er mankind.

Byrd's story about the Klan being full of the town's elites chimes along with what my grandmother from Mississipi used to say about the Klan in her area.  She was never clear on women actually being members, which I don't think they were, and grandfather was twenty years dead before I was born, so the information may be all fables-- but, the story I had was that the Klan groups were essentially independent clubs.  One club might be lawyers and bankers making sure Catholics and Blacks didn't get loans or whatever, and one club would be the mechanic and the butcher and grocer who go around smashing mailboxes, drinking beer, driving wild, and playing with matches.

"A"> It is such a relief to know how little any of this actually affected anything.  Or

"B"> my grandmother was a  bit of liar, sugar-coating everything after it was all over.

(My guess is "B")

I wouldn't hold my breath for anyone who believed in annonymous action or secret societies to be overwhelmingly self-critical or honest no matter how much time had passed.

[You know, wearing a mask at night while trespassing can get you legally shot-dead in some states.]

This is such BS I find it impossible to believe that you believe this nonsense.

...what about all those racist, segregationist Democrats who in the 1960s became, ahem, REPUBLICANS?

I defy you to name two Southern Democrats (other than Strom Thurmond) who switched parties in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Acts (which Republicans voted for in far higher percentages by the way) ... at the Federal and State level. I wrote about this a while back. So I'll just plagiarize myself. No use re-inventing the wheel?

The common assertion that the Dixiecrats moved en masse into the GOP in protest against the Democrats' supposed wholesale rejection of racism (while Talmadge, Stennis, Russell, etc still proudly wore Ds and leadership positions in the Senate ... and the lone black man in the Senate, Edward Brooke, wore an R) is patently nonsensical. Hardly any Dixiecrats ever offered to cross the aisle. The often repeated assertion that the Dixiecrats became Republicans is one of the most ahistorical myths in the history of American politics. In fact, except for Strom Thurmond, no Dixiecrat left the Democrats for the GOP in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Acts, and his leaving had virtually nothing to do with race. In fact, it seemed as if he remained in the Democrat Party only because of its stand against civil rights, because he switched after the GOP overwhelmingly voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and continued to vote just as overwhelming for Civil Rights bills in 1965 and 1968. Once Jim Crow met its end, Thurmond simply made an honest man of himself and moved to the party whose ideology lay closer to his long held antipathy to an intrusive and activist federal government

Either way, every Southern state was controlled by the Dixiecrats in 1960s, 1970s and some even up to this day. If a massive switch of partisan allegiance took place with the Dixiecrats leaving the Democrats to become Republicans in the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement, then the historical record would show huge amounts of Democrat politicians switching parties in Southern states. But if you check the records of every Southern state, that's clearly not the case. Hardly any such switches took place. In fact, legislatures of many Southern states like Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana have never known control by the Republican Party, the current GOP Governor of Georgia is its first in near a century, the current junior Senator from Louisiana is the very first Republican Senator produced by the state, etc. So the simple fact remains that 99.9% of Dixiecrats stayed in the Democrat Party. They're dying off. And, the South, moved Right even as the Democrats moved Left (witness the landmark nomination of McGovern in 1972 and the subsequent takeover by the far Left of the Democrat Party).

If Byrd is subject to attack, what about Thurmond?

You're talking as if Thurmond's segregationist past was even half as ignored as Robert Byrd's ... Robert Byrd is actually called the "conscience of the Senate" by the Press!

Thurmond's fellow Senator from South Carolina for over three decades, Fritz Hollings, was the Governor who first flew the Confederate flag over the South Carolina Capitol to show his support for segregation. This was/is hardly ever mentioned in the Press, even in articles and stories about him that devote space to detail his fellow Senator's less than illustrious past on race. No newspaper article ever mentioned the late Strom Thurmond without duly informing its readers about Thurmond's past as a segregationist Dixiecrat. Yet, despite a segregationist past every bit as repugnant as Thurmond's, despite the fact that they both were numbered among the Senators who filibustered the Civil Rights Acts, despite his once being a Grand Kleagle in the Ku Klux Klan, Robert Byrd has no fear of his racist past appearing in any newspaper. Both Byrd and Thurmond long ago apologized, and there is nothing to suggest one was any less sincere than the other. Thurmond, interestingly, was the very first Southern Senator to hire a black legislative aide. But Byrd is a member of the Democrats/Press while Thurmond had the temerity to switch parties, and therein lies the difference. Thurmond's membership in the GOP is treated as a black mark against the party while Robert Byrd, who served twelve years as the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, is often cited as a credit to the Democrats. In fact, according to the Democrats/Press, he's the "Conscience of the Senate."

"I wouldn't hold my breath for anyone who believed in annonymous action or secret societies to be overwhelmingly self-critical or honest no matter how much time had passed."

Does this hold true for members of Skull and Bones?