@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:
Senators of the same age as Byrd included Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond William Fulbright Ernest Hollings etc. These were DIxiecrats who members of the "Southern Strategy" which accounted for the GOP's becoming the patron of segregation after Thurmond lost in his presidential bid as a Dixiecrat.(Dixiecrats were a third party as these guys were laving the Democratic Party as it gradually divested itself of its segregation hitory after Reconstruction). Im not certain that they ALL were KKK members but were sympathizers)
The loss of these governors, and legislators to the GOP happened gradually after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act . It occured gradually in the 70's an 80's . The Southern Strategy still lives in GOP platforms, except that the language has been loaded with "coe talk" .
Read the Lyndon Johnson book. Its a good read about history of the middle 20th century
Whenever you have a secret organization like the KKK or whatever, that is oriented toward influencing politics and economics, you have to assume they are going to find ways to influence any and all political parties and other organizations. You can't assume that one party is the party of the KKK/etc. and others aren't, because that just tricks people into trusting wholeheartedly while wholly scapegoating the other party.
Now am I guilty of that with the Republican party? Yes, but it's only because I focus on the ideology and not on the people. I know that there are people involved with any and all political parties and organizations who are either connected with crime/corruption or interdependent with it in some way. It is no smaller than the problem of sin in this world of imperfect humans. The challenge is to find a way to alleviate problems and heal from the past without society devolving into in-fighting and scapegoating/whitewashing, which is almost everything that's going on at this point.
