The Privileges of Aristocracy: The NAACP and Robert Byrd

The NAACP has issued a statement regarding the the transformation in the ideology of the late Robert Byrd.  They have something of a good point.  People should be allowed and encouraged to change for the better. And he did maintain some principles concerning the separation of powers and senate rules. His record is a complex one.

But the NAACP misrepresented American history, airbrushing out his leadership role in the KKK  (he recruited 150 people) and transforming him in their summary from a staunch opponent of the Civil Rights Act (which he filibustered, in the second longest personal filibuster in Senate history, apparently) into a "stalwart supporter".  This airbrushing is similar to that performed by the liberal media.  Though not all media outlets left out Byrd's filibuster from their descriptions of his career.

Glenn Reynolds picks a few powerful bits  out of Doctor Zero's essay concerning the NAACP's  dishonest biography of their former foe.  Doctor Zero has produced  some remarkable essays recently, whether you agree with his reasoning or not.  Read the whole thing.  Key points to me:

. . . .  Several years after joining, Byrd told a Grand Wizard that “the Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia, and in every state of the nation.”  He was not a confused teenager when he made this statement.  We are now assured that it doesn’t matter at all.  His signature on the Democrat policy agenda was the baptism of an entirely different Robert Byrd.

Is there any way such indulgence would be granted to a private citizen?

Of course not.  This moral barter system is available only to the aristocracy.  The NAACP will mercilessly destroy the career of any private individual who violates its posted ordinances against racial insensitivity, but they are easily paid off by spending a few billion dollars of other peoples’ money. . . .

When we observe that no Republican could hope to have his biography re-written to transmute bitter racism into championship service in the cause of civil rights, we aren’t merely clucking our tongues at the unfairness of partisan dirty pool.  We’re watching one of the supreme moral judgments of our society become another sharp fang in the jaws of the leviathan State. . .  

. . . It is beneath the dignity of free people to accept such privileges for an aristocracy which judges them morally unfit to control their own lives.

The NAACP did not seem to mind when Byrd continued to oppose the nomination of conservative blacks to positions of authority. It was more important to them that Byrd supported a liberal political agenda. Re-affirming Rush Limbaugh's characterization of the organization as the "National Association for the Advancement of Liberal Colored People".