With gay marriage decided, what will be the next big left-led social change?

Um, they don't have kids walking around with amputated hands and the beginnings of black lung disease?

 

Told you I'd regret this ...

 

A sure sign of a weak argument is "both sides do it" or "neither side does anything" or "it happened 50 years ago, so it still must be true today."

A few things that have benefited both sides:
WPA, TVA. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. The parks system. Highway and interstate construction. The list is pretty lengthy but that's besides the point. A key plank in today's GOP is "the government is never the solution, it is always the problem."

And instead of turning this into a Bill Clinton dick fest and the now racist ways of decades ago, let's talk about the 44 percent of Texans who believe their state is going to be invaded next month. The people who believe blue bell's troubles are government caused so the army could have mobile morgues with their ice cream trucks.

And what brave republicans have stepped up to dissuade Texans of such? Well the governor and a senator, a presidential candidate, have only flamed the flames.

"The Wal-Mart by jerry world is going to be a prison camp," DQ exclaimed in the faculty lounge. "Jade Helm is just an excuse to take our guns. Get it together sheeple."

 

LOL.

You guys want Republicans to own the Democrats racist past, but when you push back against this idea, Stoney asks why it matters and Jay wants to change the conversation.

Bill Clinton eulogized both Fulbright and Byrd. These guys weren't thrown out of the modern Democratic Party, they died as respected, elder statesmen.

When Byrd died, President Obama said, "America has lost a voice of principle and reason."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/politics/29byrd.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0

Strom Thurmund left the Democratic Party. Name one racist Democrat who was cast out of the party.

 

Byrd also apologized for his racist past and fought to make Martin Luther King Day a national holiday,and sought a MLK memorial in DC. But I know, that makes him a flip-flopper, which Republicans have said is bad.

 

I reject the first part of your premise entirely. Also, please define "you guys." Is that Democrats? Anybody who dares question the Republican party and its agenda? I would like to see the Republicans to own their current problems, including the current bigotry within the party, but in the end, I don't really care. I'll vote for or against Republican candidates based on what I know of the person. Their party affiliation is part of that identity, but not the whole.

See that's the thing. I'm not a political fanboy. I care about the current public servants and candidates because that is what is relevant. I have voted for Republicans as well as Democrats for everything from local offices to President of the United States. You are digging into the past because you are desperate to find any angle you can to attack the party you don't like.

 

So, I guess there's some speech that Byrd gave in the 1970's where he explicitly repudiated his racist past, right?

Could you point me to it? What did he say in it? Did he admit to being a racist in the past?

Because everything I read sounds more like, "I tried it once, I didn't inhale, and I didn't like it."

Every time Byrd was given a chance to minimize his racist past, he instead minimizes the racism that existed within his "klaven".

The closest he comes to apologizing is in his 2005 autobiography, which was published when he was 87-years-old, and worried about his legacy.

Even then, the most he can admit to is sharing the "fears and prejudices" that were prevalent at the time. And, at every turn, he tries to minimize the racist nature of the Klan.

Here's the WaPo on his 2005 book:

The 770-page book is the latest in a long series of attempts by the 87-year-old Democratic patriarch to try to explain an event early in his life that threatens to define him nearly as much as his achievements in the Senate. In it, Byrd says he viewed the Klan as a useful platform from which to launch his political career. He described it essentially as a fraternal group of elites -- doctors, lawyers, clergy, judges and other "upstanding people" who at no time engaged in or preached violence against blacks, Jews or Catholics, who historically were targets of the Klan.

His latest account is consistent with others he has offered over the years that tend to minimize his direct involvement with the Klan and explain it as a youthful indiscretion. "My only explanation for the entire episode is that I 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," Byrd wrote.

While Byrd provides the most detailed description of his early involvement with the Klan, conceding that he reflected "the fears and prejudices I had heard throughout my boyhood," the account is not complete. He does not acknowledge the full length of time he spent as a Klan organizer and advocate. Nor does he make any mention of a particularly incendiary letter he wrote in 1945 complaining about efforts to integrate the military.

Byrd said in an interview last week that he never intended for his book to provide "finite details" of his Klan activities, but to show young people that there are serious consequences to one's choices and that "you can rise above your past."

A Senator's Shame


When he talks about his membership in the Klan as a "mistake" he sounds like a criminal who is sorry he got caught, not someone who is sorry he committed the crime.

And, of course he didn't join the Klan because of it's racial views, for him it was all about their anti-Communist creed:

Mr. Byrd insisted that his klavern had never conducted white-supremacist marches or engaged in racial violence. He said in his autobiography that he had joined the Klan because he shared its anti-Communist creed and wanted to be associated with the leading people in his part of West Virginia. He conceded, however, that he also “reflected the fears and prejudices” of the time.

His opponents used his Klan membership against him during his first run for the House of Representatives in 1952; Democratic leaders urged him to drop out of the race. But he stayed in and won, then spent decades apologizing for what he called a “sad mistake.”

He went on to vote for civil rights legislation in 1957 and 1960, but when the more sweeping Civil Rights Act was before Congress in 1964, he filibustered for an entire night against it, saying the measure was an infringement on states’ rights. He backed civil rights legislation consistently only after becoming a party leader in the Senate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/us/politics/29byrd.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0

And look, his "klavern" never conducted white-supremacist marches or engaged in racial violence.

He must have joined the KKK-light.

No wonder he only ever had to apologize for joining the Klan, and never for actually being a racist.

 

Channelling my inner Docquaint, define "modern". Pick a year.

 

Seriously, guys. Why are you even engaging YankeeFan on this. Right or wrong, his point is irrelevant.

 

You said the closest he came to apologizing was his biography in 2005. The same biography that says that he spent decades apologizing for a "sad mistake".

So how can he have come closest to apologizing in the book when he spent decades already doing so?

 

Does anyone really think the Democratic party has come to grips with its racist past, and atoned for it?

LOL.

Al Gore can't even come to grips with his father racism, and so instead, he just lies about it:

When he was running for president in 2000, Vice President Al Gore told the NAACP that his father, Senator Al Gore Sr., had lost his Senate seat because he voted for the Civil Rights Act. Uplifting story — except it’s false. Gore Sr. voted against the Civil Rights Act. He lost in 1970 in a race that focused on prayer in public schools, the Vietnam War, and the Supreme Court.

Democratic Party's Racist History | National Review Online

 

Hate being afflicted with jejune outlooks. Is there medicine for that?