Byrd's Bigoted History

Many of you have already seen the WaPo article on Sen. Byrd's Klan days or Best of the Web's piece on it. For those of you who haven't, here's Taranto's effort:

Klan Whitewash
Sen. Robert Byrd has a memoir out today, and in it he deals with his membership in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s. But the Washington Post reports that "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."

The recipient of that letter was Sen. Theodore Bilbo, a Mississippi Democrat who was "one of the Senate's most notorious segregationists":

Byrd said in the Dec. 11, 1945, letter--which would not become public for 42 more years with the publication of a book on blacks in the military during World War II by author Graham Smith--that he would never fight in the armed forces "with a Negro by my side." Byrd added that, "Rather I should die a thousand times, and see old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels."

Wow, this guy is as patriotic as Dick Durbin and as tolerant as Trent
Lott! Byrd also tries to minimize the Klan's racism:

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.

As usual with the likes of Taranto and Steyn, I have nothing to add.