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We Stand Passively Mute

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Robert Byrd has served with distinction and honor in the US Senate for decades. Yet the right, incapable of replying to his actual stances, persists in referring to his Klan past.

This shows a dire need for some historical perspective to untangle a simplistic, sly smear.


In the 1940's, Robert Byrd was a Dixiecrat, as were most whites in the South. He was also briefly a Klansman, also not uncommon in that cultural climate. This is not to excuse it, but merely to note that it is necessary to judge things within the context where they happened. For instance, Lincoln in his time was a radical, opposed to compromise with slavery, and yet in our time, many of his racist pronouncements would be abhorrent. Likewise whichever historical epoch one may study.
It should be noted that white Republicans held the same racial views as the Dixiecrats.

In 1948 the battle began in earnest within the Democratic Party to rid itself of the Dixiecrats, a battle which continued into the Kennedy administration and saw it's last death throes in the George Wallace phenomenon. During this time the odd alliance between labor, progressives and the like in the North with the Dixiecrats in the South became ethically unbearable for the likes of Humphrey, and with good reason. In this time, the terrorism of the white resistance to desegregation went on, and the Democrats stood so firmly for Civil Rights that the alliance with African-Americans was built that lasts to this day.

Byrd's personal trajectory was much the same, and no one can look at his record these past few decades and not honestly acknowledge that his KKK membership 60 years ago is an issue raised precisely because his politics have become progressive. He has done wonderful things in the Senate. He has served America while his most vicious critics have done no more than denigrate the deeds of such honorable men as he.

One price the Democrats paid for casting aside the Dixiecrats and embracing Martin Luther King and civil rights was that the white South has become Republican. The same Dixiecrat culture now owes loyalty to the Republicans, who are indeed seen in the South as the party of white Christians. It is no shock that many Dixiecrats, including their 1948 Presidential candidate Strom Thurmond, became Republicans. Nor is it a shock that the same people who once fought to "save Christianity" from the liberalism of its day- civil rights- now do so against today's
liberalism. It is no surprise that those who once proclaimed that interracial marriage would destroy civilization- like the Republican theocrat Jerry Falwell- now focus a similar attention on gay marriage, and away from the real issues. Culturally, Bill Frist and Tom DeLay and their "base" are the true descendants of the Dixiecrats.

The smear against Byrd thrives only in ignorance, and comes not because he was once in the KKK but because today he is progressive.

Based on its own merits, this is a wonderful and valuable book, conveying the thoughts of one of American history's giants. Don't be frightened away by RW smears.

Robert C. Byrd is an American patriot who speaks the truth while upholding and defending the Constitution. All members of Congress and the Senate, as well as the President and Vice President, solemnly swear to protect and defend the Constitution, our most precious document. It's too bad that only a few joined Robert C. Byrd in upholding that solemn oath. God Bless Robert C. Byrd, the Constitution, and the United States of America.

The 27 speeches delivered by the venerable Senator Robert C. Byrd on the misguided, misdirected, and misinformed Iraq War should be read by every American who cares about their county and the path we've been on since 2002. For those willing to shift their attention away from the mundane long enough to look behind more than three years of political spin to grasp something of the historic and future implications of this war, the Philip and Hannah Todd anthology provides a treasure of educational reading to contemplate.

Robert Byrd rightly indicts the United States Senate for the acquiescence of its constitutional responsibilities regarding Iraq and he does so as only one of his stature, erudition, and historic insight can do. As a Senate staffer from 2002 to 2005, I had the privilege of hearing the Senator deliver many of these speeches and appreciate the opportunity to hear them once again through the printed page.

There was a review already posted here of Byrd's dribble. Hope Amazon isn't practicing censorship...If so, they need to start deleting those who spew hate Bush remarks without posting true names and\or e-mails.

When Mr. Byrd publicly repudiates his sordid past in the Klan, and regretfully so, and dispenses with the occasional anti-Semitic remark, only then does Mr. Byrd deserve a readership. Not one moment before. Zell Miller has repudiated a segregationist past not nearly notorious as Bobby Byrd's, and others have to, even Jimmy Carter, but I guess its okay for a bigot who was a member of the Klan and who hates President Bush to deserve a readership, right?