ROBERT BYRD and the privileges of aristocracy. “Of course, the NAACP’s embrace of Byrd has nothing to do with principle. It’s a heartless, soulless political calculation, made by a group that profits handsomely from the immense government Byrd nourished. . . . This moral barter system is available only to the aristocracy. . . . When we observe that no Republican could hope to have his biography re-written to transmute bitter racism into championship service in the cause of civil rights, we aren’t merely clucking our tongues at the unfairness of partisan dirty pool. We’re watching one of the supreme moral judgments of our society become another sharp fang in the jaws of the leviathan State. Few indictments in our culture are more devastating than the charge of racism… and this charge is applied, or neutralized, almost entirely on the basis of the target’s usefulness to the State.”