Why do Conservatives and Libertarians continue to bring up Senator Byrd’s involvement in the Klan?

This is getting to be quite old. The continuing defamation of a dead man.

The cheap shot against Byrd is that he was back in the day an Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan and writing letters as late as 1946 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 in the nation.” I consider it a cheap shot because he did apologize for and disown his participation in the group. Better late than never, I suppose, even if it does make you wonder about all those politicians of his generation, even ones from the Deep South, who never felt a need to recruit for the KKK and never prattled on about “white niggers” like some back-country Norman Mailer. —Let’s Not Forget Sen. Byrd’s Negative Legacy – Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

Okay, so why did this reason writer even feel the need to even bring it up? Why? I’ll tell you why. To make a cheap political point; that is not entirely based in factual information. It just so happens that the Democratic Party fought hard in 1964 to get the civil rights bill passed. Yes, Byrd was one of the Southern Democrats who objected to that bill. It also happens to be a fact that Senator Barry Goldwater, a Libertarian Conservative, who also objected to it as well. As did many Conservatives as well.

It also just so happens that Byrd apologized time and time again for his involved in the Klan, From Wikipedia:

When running for the United States House of Representatives in 1952, he announced “After about a year, I became disinterested, quit paying my dues, and dropped my membership in the organization. During the nine years that have followed, I have never been interested in the Klan.” He said he had joined the Klan because he felt it offered excitement and was anti-communist.[10] However, in 1946 or 1947 he wrote a letter to a Grand Wizard stating, “The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation.”[19]

In 1997, he told an interviewer he would encourage young people to become involved in politics, but to “Be sure you avoid the Ku Klux Klan. Don’t get that albatross around your neck. Once you’ve made that mistake, you inhibit your operations in the political arena.”[20] In his latest autobiography, Byrd explained that he was a member because he “was sorely afflicted with tunnel vision—a jejune and immature outlook—seeing only what I wanted to see because I thought the Klan could provide an outlet for my talents and ambitions.”[21] Byrd also said, in 2005,

I know now I was wrong.
Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times …
and I don’t mind apologizing over and over again. I can’t erase what
happened.

For me, that is more than enough of an explanation. Let us also remember that a revered voice on the Conservative/Republican side, Strom Thurmond was also a supporter of Segregation and also reportedly a bitter racist as well.  Besides all that; While I do not condone that actions of the Klan, especially the violence towards blacks. We need to be real about all this; “Celebrating Diversity” is a joke. Just ask this guy here.

I just stand amazed of the tactics of some of the Bloggers who call themselves “Conservative”; how they engage in the tactics of the liberal left of race-bating anyone who disagrees with their dogmatic position on race. Some of them seriously need to come down to reality and realize that their ideas on race are just flat wrong. I also find it amazing that they will attack White people who stood for their own race; but they will condemn a black man in the White House, all the while kissing up to the Zionist element in Jewish Conservative politics.

Some people need to just get real…. 🙄