I used to work for a Democratic senator on Capitol Hill, and we had small televisions on our desks to watch the House and Senate floors, CPAN, CNN, etc. I was on the verge of becoming a conservative, but for some reason I still liked listening to Sen. Robert Byrd prattle on. I especially liked his dramatic gestures when he was making a big point. His colleagues couldn’t hide their boredom, and no one else paid him any attention.
Byrd’s Senate office was across the hall from where I worked. I spotted him talking to his receptionist once, and he saw me trying to catch a glimpse through his entourage. He waved.
I know he was in the Ku Klux Klan, but he was a young man and it was the 1930s. Many whites shared his view of blacks at the time but didn’t join the KKK. Whenever I bring up his affiliation, I’m usually trying to counter the old conservatives-are-racists charge. We all have a past, and we’ve all done things we are ashamed of now. I don’t hold Byrd’s past against him. I really don’t. But I do hold his present against him.
Presently, he’s been accused of comparing conservatives to Nazis on the Senate floor. Byrd disputes the charges, insisting that he used the Nazi reference to warn us against repeating the past, or something like that. Whether his version is true or not, I think it’s time for the old man to retire. According to the New York Times (reg. req.):
“We, unlike Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy, have never stopped being a nation of laws, not of men,” he said. “But witness how men with motives and a majority can manipulate law to cruel and unjust ends.”Mr. Byrd quoted the historian Alan Bullock, saying Hitler “turned the law inside out and made illegality legal.” He said the plan to limit filibusters would have a similar effect.
I don’t think it’s that big a deal, but I have a feeling a blog swarm will develop, one that may “encourage” Byrd to retire. The old man shouldn’t go out like that.
He should just go.
Update (3/4): Check out David Limbaugh’s, “Robert Byrd’s Identification with the Framers.”
