Opinion: Se. Robert Byrd Evolved, Unlike Many of His Critics

(June 28) -- West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd wasn't even gone yet when posters on right-wing websites were dancing on his grave. At Andrew Breitbart's site, the nastiness was sickening. Among them (reprinted verbatim):

Hasta la vista KKK Birdman.
Funny how old D-rats are falling like flies this year. (Yes that WAS an insensitive statement. Deal with it!)
oh ya let me say something *nice* about the Kleagle: . ooops - "Grand Kleagel" sorry
will the kkk march in his funeral procession? and will they be before or after the naacp representatives? and will his headstone monument be smaller, or bigger than roland burris' here in illinois. and will they keep naming things after byrd once, or if he passes on? not that i don't wish him all the best, but he has looked and acted like the living dead for the last few years (yes, this is also a insensitive comment, bite me!)

And those are the ones that weren't "deleted by the administrator." At Michelle Malkin's site, while there were well-wishes for Dick Cheney and pleas to take down nasty posts about him at The Huffington Post, the Byrd-bashing was unabated.

Everyone light a ~~candle~~ cross.
This past week, my daughter and granddaughter moved back to the mainland. My truck had to be towed. My wife's car has a blown head gasket. My dog has pinkeye.This is the first good news I've had in a while.

Yes, it's true that Robert C. Byrd was a Klan member who said derogatory things about blacks. He was, like Strom Thurmond, a Southern Democrat, who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

I had the honor of interviewing Sen. Byrd in March 2005, when I asked him about his past with the Klan and his reaction to it being continually raised. He said it was in the past. "I have apologized for it. And that's all I can do. ... I was wrong, as many young men are wrong today, even when they join groups." And I asked what enabled him to change.

COLMES: What changed you? What enabled your thinking to progress? What changed you as a man?

BYRD: Time, reflection and the teachings of the Bible, the sermon on the mount. My wife and I, we're born- again Christians. That's term you hear a lot about. Well, we are indeed born-again Christians. We were baptized in the Old Church Yard at a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Baptist Church in 1946. That's 59 years ago. That changed my thinking in many ways. And as time goes on, as experience has its impact, as the years come and go, we all ripen and change, I hope for the better, and I think I have.

Byrd, unlike Thurmond, who is revered by the likes of those who wrote the posts above, changed his views over time. By the late 1970s Byrd was speaking in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment. Eventually, he regarded his vote in favor of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that led to the Vietnam War a sin. In fact, Byrd became a liberal lion who stood up to the Bush administration, invoking the rules of the Senate he knew like no one else to point out that it is illegal to fight without a declaration of war.

Robert Byrd evolved as a man. Isn't that something we all wish for ourselves? And isn't that the truly Christian way?

Those who have used his illness and now his death to renounce him for a long-ago past that he himself has renounced might pause to remember that. They might also reflect that one of the other great Christian teachings is forgiveness.

Oh, and at the end of his life, Robert Byrd, one-time Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan, a man who once said he wouldn't serve in the military alongside "race mongrels," helped elect a black man president of the United States.

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