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Robert Byrd and the Privileges of Aristocracy
...As Mike Riggs points out, Byrd was a committed opponent of the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He wasn’t just a member of the Ku Klux Klan – he was part of its leadership. Within the last few years, he made statements that could at best be characterized as “racially insensitive,” which means “instantly fatal to the career of any Republican who said them.”...

...Benjamin Jealous is saying that Byrd’s activities in later years completely erase the stain of racism from his energetic membership in the KKK. 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. The transparent cynicism of this arrangement, made clear by the spectacle of wretched old Robert Byrd lying in state while his past is lovingly airbrushed by “journalists” at the New York Times, transforms the moral revulsion of racism into an instrument of tyranny.

The NAACP, and similar groups, gain prestige and authority through the patronage of politicians. In return, they offer precious moral capital to the politicians they endorse. This is a completely closed system, accessible only by members of the political and cultural elite, who support the agenda of increasing government power… with very expensive associate memberships available to well-heeled donors of compatible ideology.

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. Few indictments in our culture are more devastating than the charge of racism… and this charge is applied, or neutralized, almost entirely on the basis of the target’s usefulness to the State.

The Democrat Party represents the State (and is increasingly disinterested in representing anyone else.) The life and death of Robert Byrd demonstrate that loyalty to the Party and its agenda provide total inoculation against offenses which are completely inexcusable for the rest of us. As we saw in the aftermath of Ted Kennedy’s death, faith in the State leads to miracles of moral transformation....

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Clinton on Byrd’s KKK membership: Hey, he was just trying to get elected
As painfully lame as this is, I’m sort of impressed that Clinton felt obliged to acknowledge Byrd’s Klan past as frankly as he did. Jake Tapper’s complained more than once this week on Twitter about lefties giving him grief for daring to note that the former president pro temp of the Senate is also a former sheethead. The Chappaquiddick rules apply, it seems: When a liberal icon dies, it’s simply ungracious to recall moments where he might have, say, left someone for dead or burned a cross on someone’s lawn. Accentuate the positive, America.

Also, contra Billy Jeff, Byrd’s association with the Klan wasn’t exactly “fleeting.” He joined in 1942; four years later, he was still babbling about his hope for a KKK renaissance in West Virginia. And 18 years after that, he famously filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Nothing necessarily racist about opposing a statute, of course, but then that logic didn’t save Rand Paul a few months ago when he raised libertarian concerns about a single section of that same law (before reiterating that he would have voted for it anyway). Exit question: How bad, precisely, do your actions have to be before the “he was just trying to get elected” defense doesn’t cut it?...