Job-title inflation

To Buscador

What you say is true.

Maybe we can exclude people who play dress up in the bed clothes, call themselves the Grand Bebop BoogaLoo, for simply being hilarious.

Almost impossible to find any politician around the major countries of the world who:
- says what he means
- will act openly according to his beliefs if they go against the popular trend
- wouldn't demonstrate a public posture that the voters like
- would take Hitler or Gandhi as examples.

No matter what one believes about Byrd and the past, it's absolutely 100% disgraceful that Mr. Clinton would try to justify Byrd in saying it was a "fleeting association" with the KKK (untrue as he was leader of a local chapter and recruited 150+ members) and that he did it just to get elected (in other words, Mr. Clinton implies that not only did Byrd knowingly join an organization that Byrd knew was wrong (else why have to justify it at all?), but that joining such an organization when one knows it is wrong is okay as long as one get elected!).

Sad, really. Shame on you, Mr. Former President.

@radwrite

yes, i agree that we are products of our time, but there are ways to change specification of the product we all are...!

Scary thought of the evening: Could it be that the Harry Potter series is merely a coded paean to the KKK? they sound extracted from the same source code... :-)

To Sensible GaTech Student

So I gather you don't major in Philosophy over at Ivan Allen College then?

I'm sure Kant had something to say regarding the primacy of moral intentions over results, but never mind...

I suppose you are right, and we should accept hypocrisy as a sine-qua-non of contemporary public life.

The politician who beats his wife yet earmarks fund in legislation for a woman's crisis centre?

The TV evangelist who denounces homosexuality only to cruise the strip looking for rent boys at night?

I mean as long they act alright.

Ex paedophiles as primary school teachers?
Ex drug addicts as pharmacists?
Ex arsonists as forest rangers?
Ex convicts as prison guards?

Seems that you would not disqualify anyone...as long as they didn't act the way they felt, and indeed acted in contradiction to their impulses... In fact deceived us, just as long as they didn't act accordingly.

But on the other hand what does it say about our society in general, where is our credibility, our moral rectitude when we elect representatives the like Jesse Helms or a Robert Byrd to high office?... REPRESENTATIVE democracy....tricky one that.

Representing you?

Grand Master Flash (cross burning manager)

Grand Theft Auto (car burglary president)

What I mean is, if a racist politician votes anti-racist, does it matter that he's racist? Perhaps if he professes he's not a racist...but even then, does it make a difference whether he's lying or not, or what his motivations might be? The end result is the same.

He can go home and curse the Jews, but if he shows up to work and remains professional, that's a high enough bar to set for our politicians. Take it or leave it...

LaContra:

Black cats and white cats catch mice. I don't really care what his reasons were for changing his vote, and I don't particularly care for his personal morals.

The results are what matters, and judging on that fairly more objective standard still causes him to fall short. But then again, using relativist thinking, can we really blame politicians for pork projects, just as our capitalist system assumes individuals to be rational and self-interested? Perhaps pork and waste are just inherent in human beings.

Given that premise, he's not such a bad guy.

To radwrite.

I agree with you up to a point...we cannot dismiss totally the environment of the times, though we cannot say it was a majority or minority position with any certainty.

My point has more to do with the Senator himself.

Did he really reform his views on race?
Or did he, as we know politicians are want to do, merely pander to his electorate with their ever changing mores?

Thus as society became slowly more tolerant did he reform his heart or just his political platform?

From 1952-59 he was in the Representatives voting solidly on an anti-Civil Rights platform.

In '59 he was elected to the Senate

By 1964 he was voting against the Civil Rights Act
and in 1965 against the Voting Act

By 1967 he was still voting against black appointees to the Supreme Court, specifically because of their race

So for 16 years his voting record was solidly anti-black, anti-Civil Rights

Because in 1968 he voted in favour of the Civil Rights Act (Fair Housing Act)...

But by then he and the other Southern state democrats either had to reign in their blatant racism or forgo inclusion in the mainstream of national politics

From that point on, stunningly, he voted FOR every piece of relevant Rights legislation, scoring over 65% from the ACLU and 100% from the NCAAP on his senate voting record.

I mean many Ex-communist states included reformed Communists in their post-comm administrations

But they had the 'benefit' or experience of having seen their political 'dreams' definitively crushed under the wheels of history

Do we treat racism the same?

Would we have been content with a Himmler, or a Hess, or even a fringe NAZI like Speer, entering the post-war German government because they had realised the error of their beliefs?

In South Africa, did FW de Klerk suddenly see the moral error of his ways?...
Or did he simply bow the inevitability of his defeat, and move to secure his place in history?...I mean a Nobel Peace Prize is a helluva consolation prize no?

I lived in the US below that Mason Dixon line....
I've met some REAL racists, perhaps readers will remember in 1998 when a black man, James Byrd, was dragged to death behind a pick-up truck?
That was in Jasper Texas... and back then there was a KKK outfitters in the main street of Jasper, in 1998!

But maybe I'm just a cynic when it comes to hardcore racists professing a change of heart....

Cyclops, Dragon, Titan? All are mythical losers, in effect. Odysseus (the hero) defeats the Cyclops, St. George slayed the dragon, and the Titans were no match for Zeus.

Very telling...

thischarmingmatt

Forever the diplomat.

I don't know if there's a really satisfactory way to account for historical context and some idea of universal morality but it's equally impossible to ignore either. I think the best that can be said (and what everyone can probably agree with) is "That was bad. Let's try and make sure we do better."

nipponichiban -

Absolute rubbish. I am not seeking to justify racism. However, what the general population saw as justifiable in 1940 was very different to what the general population sees as justifiable in 2010.

It is highly likely that the prevailing attitudes in 2080 will be different, again.

We are all, at least to some degree, the products of our times.

For what it's worth, I saw 2 obits online that mentioned Byrd's KKK association - in The Globe and Mail & The Guardian. Don't know about the print editions, though. Also it was mentioned on at least one news network here in the US, MSNBC.

And a lot of people here have known about this for a long time - it's really fairly common knowledge among people who pay attention to either politics or race relations, and they also know that he mended his ways, and pretty much did a 180 on his opinions.

And as for the Klan nomenclature, they used quite a few 'kl' names - check out...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan#Vocabulary

Those titles are RPG-worthy. If Final Fantasy ever creates a character that uses one of those titles, I'd like to battle him.

@radwrite

the world was like this is NO JUSTIFICATION for racism being the least bit right!

In 1940, it was acceptable to kill jews in Germnay - the world was like this so it is respectable that people hat something to fight for,... I hope you can agree that your argument is flawed to the bones.

It's a sad story, but looking at the titles it seems like some 5 year olds sat together and created their own imaginary kingdom...! Scary that such a movement could find that much support over its times.

I would burst out laughing whenever I had to talk to the great wizard

Sounds like a d&d gathering...

On a side note, Senator Byrd has supposedly reformed on is now pro-civil rights.

LaContra -

My point is, simply, that people deserve to be judged according to the standards of the times that they lived through.