In their headlong rush to remove all public monuments to the Confederacy, its warriors, and the dead-enders who fought on its behalf after the Civil War ended, liberals are curiously overlooking a prime offender -- one of their own.
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh wasn't going to let this pass unnoticed.
On his show Friday, Limbaugh talked about the Memphis city council voting unanimously to move the remains of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife, along with a statue of Forrest, from a public park to a location still undetermined.
Forrest is possibly better known for a horrible distinction -- as one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan. And among its devout followers in the mid-20th century was a West Virginian Democrat pol named Robert Byrd, who later ascended to the highest reaches of the US Senate and was continually applauded, at least on the left, as revered elder statesman.
Why isn't Byrd getting the same bum's rush as Bedford, Limbaugh asked --
OK, let me guess, folks -- some of you when you heard me mention the name Nathan Bedford Forrest, it rang a bell. You couldn't quite place it but you had heard the name, right? And then when I said Southern general, Confederate general, oh yeah, yeah yeah. Well, let me tell you about Nathan Bedford Forrest. You see, they already in Memphis renamed the name of the park. Now they're going to remove the bones and his poor wife whose name still hasn't appeared in the story.
But Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Democrat. He was such a prominent Democrat, such a radical Democrat, he helped found the Ku Klux Klan. Now who do you think honored this guy in the first place?! Democrats! It wasn't a bunch of Republicans that built statues and flagpoles and memorials to this guy. Who did it?! It was Democrats!I'm going to tell you something else, folks -- all of this is pee pee, ca ca, do do. I am not going to believe that the Democrats are serious about removing the scourge of the past until they rename everything in West Virginia after Robert W. Byrd (Byrd's middle initial was actually C., for Carlyle), because you ought to see the list of things that are named after Robert W. Byrd in West Virginia. It would take you I don't know how many pieces of paper to list everything -- the highways, the rest areas, the junk yards, the buildings, the parks. It is embarrassing the number of places in West Virginia which are named after Robert W. Byrd, who was a grand klegal and a klingon or some such thing in the Ku Klux Klan. Well, he was! And I don't see anybody making a mad dash to dig him up and move him somewhere else and to strip ev-, I mean, the federal buildings in that state, every damn one of 'em practically is named after him -- the highways, the turnpikes, the thoroughfares, the back streets, the back alleys! He was the Democrat majority leader of the Senate, was considered the dean of the Senate, he was a grand klingon in the Ku Klux Klan for crying out loud!
They can talk about the Confederate flag all they want and Bill Clinton, he's out (mimicks Clinton), I started cryin', I almost started cryin' when I saw that flag come down today, oh my -- he raised the damn thing in Arkansas! In memory of his mentor, J. William Fulbright, also a segregationist senator, unrepentant segregationist. This is such ca ca, folks. At the end of the day, all of it, you got John Lewis in there and all these other people and the impression that they're leaving is that the Republicans suffer another big defeat today as the Confederate flag is removed in South Carolina. The Republicans had nothing to do with putting the Confederate flag up! And the Republicans had nothing to do with everything in West Virginia being named after Robert Byrd.
Liberals aren't likely to scrub Byrd's presence in the public square with a ferocity equal to that aimed at Forrest, especially considering that Byrd "spent decades" apologizing for his involvement with the Klan, calling it a "sad mistake."
Instead, the left will do what they've done with late New Deal diplomat Alger Hiss since the Venona intercepts proved Hiss was a Soviet spy -- he will be airbrushed from public memory, except among conservatives with long memories. Just a matter of time before lefists invoke Byrd with the same rare frequency that they now cite Hiss.
