Im not really disagreeing with any of you people. Just dispelling some of the illusions some people have about the KKK. Its not something worth defending at all. On any level. They have done some terrible stuff to people of all colors including white people Its not about them having free speech. Its about the stuff they have done and still do

Based on what been said so far, I must admit I have no idea what you are talking about. You mean the national body was persecuted for crimes? Or that a new law was passed forbidding the KKK? Or something else?

I have family members in the Klan...so ummmm yeah I know about it and that is why I have nothing to do with them. My dad's side of the family are racists. My grandfather (when he was dying) would have rather died an agonizing death than to let a doctor that was Middle Eastern tend to him. My father separated himself from that family as soon as he could. I loved my grandparents but I didn't like what they thought. but it was their right to think that regardless of how I felt about it. I have seen racists. I do know what I'm talking about as well

you can prosecute for breaking the laws but not for someone's beliefs

Well technically,the KKK was illegal from the time it was formed. Thats why they wore masks. But in the 1950s they were declared to be Unamerican and a threat by the FBI and goverment (because they got busted in a bunch of illegal stuff by the feds)and the National KKK was shut down and they broke up into little groups with slightly different names.

Mirror,

I'd like to try another angle, to help me understand what you may or may not be saying:

Are you opposed to the idea of racists people being allowed to non-violently, verbally, advocate racism? If a new group forms, calls themselves the MMMs, says they hate blacks and want to march in the street and hand out flyers .... should that be illegal, in your opinion?

I think massage is saying what I am apparently failing to say, very nicely....thank you

I am saying it(the KKK) is like the mafia.The mafia can call itself whatever it wants but it's still the mafia.Can the mafia march in the streets and hand out flyers?

I'm not really disagreeing with you and massage.I'm making a related point but not neccesarily disagreeing with what yall are saying

I come from an "old southern family" if you know what I mean. My great grandpa dressed like Col.Sanders if you get my drift. You should hear my accent

I do too. I sound like Ellie Mae Clampett. I know about racial hatred from one side of my family. that family has been racist for ages. my mom's side is the opposite. luckily my dad and his siblings grew away from that mind set. I do know from first hand experience

Though you didn't answer the question, I do think your response has helped me greatly to see a where you are coming from. Thank you.

White supreacist groups are American terrorists. They intimidate, coerce, kill, etc...

You take them way too seriously. Theres been like 13 murders by skinheads in the US ever. The klan hasnt done anything since the sixties and weve since learned the US govt was behind most of the violence of that era as part of cointelpro. Tim mcveigh's co-conspirator was married to an asian woman, and thats the only real domestic terror I can think of besides abortion people which again, not a race deal.

The environmental wack-jobs, now theres some modern terrorism:

"Organizations that have been labeled as "eco-terrorists" in the United States include the Animal Liberation Front (ALF),[14] and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF),[14]. The FBI in 2001 named the ELF as "one of the most active extremist elements in the United States", and a "terrorist threat,"[14] although they publicly disavow harm to humans or animals.[15][16]. The Greenpeace organization has also been implicated (and in some cases indicted) in eco-terrorism and associated unlawful use of monies as well as anti-piracy laws concerning unlawful boarding of private vessels on the high seas. [17]"

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To address your premise that anti-obama is a racist deal is absolutely divide and conquor politics and reprehensible. The left is full of people who support forced sterilization, and regard humans as a curse on earth, racism against all mankind at once.

So both sides have fringe elements, the democrat/fascist/socialist side identifies far more with its fringe than the conservative/libertarian side. Environmental nutjobs are welcome at the DNC but the RNC couldnt run the klan out fast enough, and I still remember what party robert byrd and george wallace were in.

If Herman Kane or Thomas Sowell were running these same so called racists would rush to the polls to vote for them, its a lie. There may be racism in the same way we call michael moore fat. Its not that people hate hiom for being fat, but because they hate him they make fat jokes. There may be an element of that against obama, but rest assured, obama is hated not because hes black, but because he is red.

This thread brings to mind this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7syx26QtQIM&feature=related

of course msnbc reports it as racist armed white men and edits it to hide his skin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYKQJ4-N7LI&feature=related

So whose the racist lady? Better yet whose the race baiting blowhard?

Racist crimes continue today in this country. Statistics are not accurate because the crimes do not get reported all the time that they happen.

Trying to do the switch and bait doesn't work for me. The racist message is hatred and it is not a healthy nor positive message.

Calling Obama a communist is part of the racist propaganda used to demonize the man.

So all you did was prove my point.

They haven't done anything since the 60's?!

Wiki:

In 1971, Klansmen used bombs to destroy ten school buses in Pontiac, Michigan. Klansman David Duke was active in South Boston during the school busing crisis of 1974. Duke was leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from 1974 until he resigned from the Klan in 1978.

On November 3, 1979 the Greensboro massacre occurred in Greensboro, North Carolina where five marchers were killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party while staging a protest, while no Klan or neo-Nazis were injured or killed. This was the culmination of attempts by the Communist Workers Party to organize industrial workers, predominantly black, in the area.

Jerry Thompson, a newspaper reporter who infiltrated the Klan in 1979, reported that the FBI's COINTELPRO efforts were highly successful. Rival Klan factions accused each other's leaders of being FBI informants. Bill Wilkinson of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was revealed to have been working for the FBI. During Thompson's brief membership, his truck was shot at, he was yelled at by black children, and a Klan rally he attended turned into a riot when black soldiers on an adjacent military base taunted the Klansmen. Attempts by the Klan to march were often met with counter protests and sometimes with violence.

In 1980 three Ku Klux Klansmen shot four elderly black women (Viola Ellison, Lela Evans, Opal Jackson and Katherine Johnson) in Chattanooga, Tennessee following a KKK initiation rally. (A fifth woman, Fannie Crumsey, was injured by flying glass in the incident.) None of the five victims died. Attempted murder charges were filed against the three Klansmen, two of whom - Bill Church and Larry Payne - were acquitted by an all-white jury and the other of whom - Marshall Thrash - was sentenced by the same jury to nine months on lesser charges. He was released after three months. In 1982 a jury awarded the five women $535,000 in a civil rights trial.

After Michael Donald was lynched in 1981 in Alabama, the FBI investigated his death. Two local Klansmen were convicted of having a role including Henry Hays who was sentenced to death. With the support of attorneys Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Michael's mother, Beulah Mae Donald, sued the Ku Klux Klan in civil court in Alabama. Her lawsuit against the United Klans of America was tried in February 1987. The all-white jury found the Klan responsible for the lynching of Michael Donald and ordered the Klan to pay $7 million USD. To pay the judgment, the Klan turned over all of its assets, including its national headquarters building in Tuscaloosa.

After exhausting the appeals process, Henry Hayes was executed for Donald's death in Alabama on June 6, 1997. It was the first time since 1913 that a white man had been executed in Alabama for a crime against an African American. Thompson, the journalist who claimed he had infiltrated the Klan, related that Klan leaders who appeared indifferent to the threat of arrest showed great concern about a series of civil lawsuits filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center for damages in the millions of dollars. These were filed after Klansmen shot into a group of African Americans. Klansmen curtailed activities to conserve money for defense against the lawsuits. The Klan itself used lawsuits as tools. They filed a libel suit to prevent publication of a paperback edition of Thompson's book.

The present-day Ku Klux Klan is not one organization. Rather it is made up of small independent chapters across the United States. The formation of independent chapters has made the KKK groups more difficult to infiltrate and researchers find it hard to estimate its numbers. KKK members have stepped up recruitment in recent years but the organization continues to grow slowly, with membership estimated at 5,000–8,000 across 179 chapters. These latest drives have seized upon issues such as people's anxieties about illegal immigration, urban crime and same-sex marriage.

The only known former member of the Klan to hold a federal office currently in the United States is Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who said he "deeply regrets" having joined the Klan more than half a century ago, when he was about 24 years old. Byrd joined as a young man in the 1940s, recruiting 150 friends and acquaintances from his small West Virginia town. He later said he was a Klan member for about a year, but contemporary newspapers carried stories about a letter of his recommending a friend as Klaneagle in 1946. In 2005, when he published a memoir and was asked again about his life, Byrd said, "I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times ... and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened."

Some of the larger KKK organizations in operation include:

* Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, prevalent in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and other areas of the Southeastern U.S.
* Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan[101]
* Imperial Klans of America[102]
* Knights of the White Kamelia
* Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, headed by national director and self-claimed pastor Thom Robb, and based in Zinc, Arkansas.[103] It claims to be the biggest Klan organization in America today. Spokesmen refer to it as a "sixth era Klan", and it continues to be a racist group.

Numerous smaller groups use the Klan name. Estimates are that about two-thirds of KKK members are concentrated in the South, with another third situated primarily in the lower Midwest.

On November 14, 2008, an all-white jury of seven men and seven women awarded $1.5 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages to plaintiff Jordan Gruver, represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center against the Imperial Klans of America. The ruling found that five IKA members had savagely beaten Gruver, then 16 years old, at a Kentucky county fair in July 2006.

Many Klan groups have formed strong alliances with other white supremacist groups like Neo-Nazis. Some Klan groups have become increasingly "Nazified" adopting the look and emblems of Nazi skinheads.

Although there are numerous KKK groups, the media and popular discourse generally refer to the Klan for expediency. The ACLU has provided legal support to various factions of the KKK in defense of their First Amendment rights to hold public rallies, parades, and marches, and their right to field political candidates.

like I've said before...how do you know when you've won an arguement with a Liberal ?...they call you a racist...

These folks haven't gone away they are just changing tactics. Most look just like anyone else. I just posted about the Neo Nazi groups going after middle america.

That's a stupid saying.

More people die in like 10 minutes on the highway. Again, you take them way too seriously. If you want to quote racial crime statistics we can but you probably dont want to go down that road very far.

you apparently have never read one of these:

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_02/pdf/0front.pdf

For example:

For starters, you have to understand this fact which way inflates the white column:

-------Prior to 1986, Hispanics were classified as a distinct and separate racial group. Not anymore. The FBI and U.S. Census Bureau no longer distinguish between Hispanics (who are actually Spanish speaking Indians for the most part) and Whites; their crimes are lumped together in one ethnic pot. The 22,354,059 Hispanics living in the U.S. do not exist, at least not in the ethnic sense when it comes to the FBI compiling criminal statistics for mainstream and news organizations.

--------If one looks at interracial crime as a whole, Black on White interracial crime largely outnumber White on Black interracial crime. Oddly, while “white racism”, about 1700 crimes, is often used to justify Black people resentment and agressivity toward Whites, White people are not suppose to feel a thing or the slightest resentment for the ceaseless racial violence of which they are the target.

----Blacks murder Whites at 18 times the rate Whites murder Blacks.

---------Some 90% of the victims of race crimes are Whites.

-----A) Blacks commit 8 times more assaults than Whites. B) Blacks commit 9 times more rapes than Whites. C) Blacks commit 14 times more murders than Whites. D) Blacks commit 19 times more armed robberies. E) Black neighborhoods are 35 times more violent than White neighborhoods. F) There were 629,000 interracial attacks committed in 1985 (the last year the FBI "chose" to report this information). Some nine out of every ten were committed by Blacks against Whites. G. Black males (6% of the population) make up 46% of the nation's prison population.

--------------------------------

So again, you take the klan way too seriously. Adressing the issues above would deprive them of any motive and perhaps we should adress the millions of victims of black on white crime rather than focus on a handful of white on black crimes or some dude in a bedsheet.

These statistics are not accurate either. It is more racist propaganda used to demonize blacks.

Still proving my point.