In a key note speech at Byrd’s funeral, Bill Clinton defended deceased Senator Byrd’s connection to the Klan.
“He once had a fleeting association with the Ku Klux Klan, what does that mean? I’ll tell you what it means. He was a country boy from the hills and hollows from West Virginia. He was trying to get elected,” Clinton said.
“And maybe he did something he shouldn’t have done come and he spent the rest of his life making it up. And that’s what a good person does. There are no perfect people. There are certainly no perfect politicians,” he added.
Clinton would certainly know about imperfections, as a person, and as a husband.
The late Senator joined the Klan in 1942, becoming head of the local chapter before claiming to lose interest in the organization a year later. However, in 1946 Byrd stated that the KKK was “needed today as never before”, he also defended the Klan during his Senate run in 1958, voted against Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas to be appointed to the Supreme Court, and he filibustered against the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
So much for Clinton’s description of a “fleeting” association with the KKK.
Obama described Byrd as a “statesman”, adding that his ties to the Klan could be forgiven following his long career as a Senator.
“We know there are things he said and things he did that he came to regret,” Obama said.
In reference to a conversation Obama said he once had with Byrd the president noted: “He said, ‘There are things I regretted in my youth. You may know that.’ I said, ‘None of us are absent some regrets, senator. That’s why we enjoy and seek the grace of God.’”
“And as I reflect on the full sweep of his 92 years, it seems to me that his life bent toward justice,” Obama added. “Like the Constitution he tucked in his pocket, like the nation itself, Robert Byrd possessed that quintessential American quality, and that is the capacity to change, a capacity to learn, a capacity to listen, a capacity to be made more perfect.”
It is said that we should not speak ill of the dead but stretching the truth beyond recognition is inappropriate, even at a funeral.
Blog Smith is inspired by the myth of Hephaestus in the creation of blacksmith-like, forged materials: ideas. This blog analyzes topics that interest me: IT, politics, technology, history, education, music, and the history of religions.