I thought this was a great e-mail, in response to me Byrd column from last week. I don’t see eye to eye with everything in it, but it makes a strong case, well.

Dear Mr. Goldberg, Your questions about Byrd eulogies were appropriately balanced for a man who was as complex as the state he represented, the only state whose border fall completely within the Appalachian region. He emerged from hardship and poverty, and maintained stubborn convictions and a vigorous and highly disciplined personal constitution. I grew up in southerm West Virginia in the 1950s and 60s; watched JFK use the state as stepping stone to legitimize his candidacy as a Roman Catholic winning the primary in a state more than 90% Protestant; and witness his remembering of that state with the beginnings of the JFK/LBJ “War on Poverty.” Appalachian poverty is complex and endemic, the result of blatant exploitation, bloody labor wars, and forbidding geography. West Virginia was born of class struggle with the plantation gentry of Virginia. West Virginians were mountain people who resented slavery, snobbery, and all kinds of outside experts and meddlers. “Mountaineers are Always Free” the state motto, even boldly sits over the entrance to the state prison. Robert Byrd was a mountaineer in all the raw ugliness and pure unadulterated strength of his roots. He was never popular beyond his own constituency, but he was often respected for his “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” power plays with the “good old boy” establishment. He methodically sabotaged Ted Kennedy’s position, wrestling away the office of majority whip. He was often as much a tool for leverage among Republican as among Democrats. When the coal & steel based industrial complex of this country collapsed, and the already struggling economy of West Virginia was ripped to shreds (in my home county, McDowell, personal income dropped by 66.6% in just one year, 1986-87. It was a devastating change that decimated the state population. Those left behind were disproportionately poor, uneducated, aged, unhealthy, and welfare supported.), Robert Byrd turned all his leverage and legislative manipulation into a one-man mission to move as much of the Washington based economy as he could into West Virginia. It was his way of putting a dying state on life support. Ironic that the whole country seems to be dropping into that pattern today. Robert Byrd probably had more in common with Jerry Falwell than he had with any Democrat in 21st century Washington. Byrd was a throwback to 19th century America even in the 1950’s. When I graduated from High School in 1969, I already thought he was old, narrow, and old fashioned, but I admired his steely work ethic, his meek, common man identity, his Horatio Alger biography, and his “Carry a big stick” approach to winning fights with his fellow Democrats who lacked his discipline, savvy, and pure grit determination. Why was he so eulogized by the left wing establishment? Probably because he was still calling in dues and favors from the grave.