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Obituary；Robert Byrd
Robert C. Byrd, doyen of the United States Senate, died on June 28th, aged 92
WHENEVER Robert Byrd walked the corridors and chambers of the Senate, he went in a crowd of people. Some were his constituents, in camouflage caps and T-shirts, gape-mouthed among the gilt and marble, come to talk to him about the problems of Marsh Fork Elementary School or their uncle's black lung. But he also saw Henry Foote of Mississippi wielding his pistol, Sam Houston of Texas whittling wooden hearts for the ladies, and little John Randolph of Virginia strutting past with his hunting dogs; and Cicero in the shadows, and just behind him Cato the younger, whispering “I would not be beholden to a tyrant.”
無論什么時候羅伯特·伯德行走在參議院的走廊和房間里，總有一群人相伴而行。一些是他的選民，戴著迷彩帽，穿著T恤，瞠目于參議員的金碧輝煌，他們是來找他談馬什福克小學或者他們叔叔的黑肺之類的問題。但他也見過密西西比的亨利·富特揮舞手槍，薩姆·休斯頓為女士們制作木心，還見過矮小的約翰·倫道夫昂首闊步走過參議院；還有陰影中的西塞羅，和他身后的小卡圖，喃喃：“我不沾暴君的光。”
The Roman Senate fascinated Mr Byrd almost as much as the American. When it declined, the Republic fell. And why had it declined? Because it had become passive, failed to raise its voice; and especially because it had handed meekly to Caesar and Sulla the power of the pursestrings. Mr Byrd therefore spent his career—the longest Senate service in American history, incorporating six years as majority whip, 12 years as majority or minority leader and 20 years as chairman or ranking minority member of the Appropriations Committee—learning, describing and expertly applying the rules that kept the Senate a force in government. He was constantly alert both to executive overreach and to weakness in his own beloved chamber, “the anchor of the Republic, the morning and evening star in the American constitutional constellation”.
伯德對羅馬元老院的著迷不亞于美國參議院。隨著元老院的衰退，羅馬共和國也滅亡了。它為什么會衰退？因為它變得消極，不再高聲疾呼；特別是因為對于凱撒與蘇拉，它將財政拱手相讓。因此，伯德終其一生——美國歷史上任期最長的參議員，包括6年的多數黨黨鞭，12年多數黨或少數黨領袖以及20年撥款委員會主席或高級少數黨成員——學習，描述，而且巧妙地應用這些規(guī)則，使得參議院仍舊是政府的一股力量。他時刻警惕濫用職權和自己受愛戴的內閣的弱點，“共和國之棟梁，美國憲法星座中的啟明星和長庚星。”
Dignity was his byword: three-piece suits, velvet waistcoats and the rolling oratory of a man who had been a fine lay preacher before he left West Virginia. His courtesy was instinctive, his thank-you notes reliably there the next day. The point of all this, though, was to uphold the worth of the Senate. At meetings with the president he insisted on taking a staff person, because the president had one, and the branches were equal. He kept laptops out of the chamber, but voted for televised proceedings, so that the Senate would be visible to the people to whom it belonged. The constitution, as he reminded listeners, pulling it from his left breast pocket where he kept it over his heart, had made the American people sovereign and mentioned their Congress first. Now, like him, they had to revere and defend it.
高雅是他的座右銘：3件套裝西服，天鵝絨馬甲和圓熟的口才——他離開西弗吉尼亞前曾是一個優(yōu)秀的非神職布道者。他的禮節(jié)毫不做作，他的感謝信從不遲到。然而，這一切的意義都在與維護參議院的形象。會見總統(tǒng)時，他堅持要帶上一名工作人員，因為三權領導等級相同，而總統(tǒng)帶了一個。他不允許在會議室里用筆記本電腦，但卻支持電視直播議程，好讓該看見的人看見參議院的樣子。憲法讓美國成為一個主權國家，它把國會放在第一位，他在提醒聽眾時，從左胸口袋里拿出了他一直保存在心上的憲法。現在，像伯德一樣，他們也要尊重和維護它。
He grappled masterfully with 11 presidents, and liked them less as he got older. George Bush junior he detested, a reckless and arrogant man who, on Iraq, overrode the war-declaring powers of Congress while the Senate stood pitifully by. “In this terrible show of weakness”, Mr Byrd wrote, “the Senate left an indelible stain upon its own escutcheon.” Some Democrats pleased him little better. Though most of his 18,500 votes went with his party, he had an old southerner's conservative streak, besides a West Virginian's tenderness for coal-mining and steel-making; and party ran second to the Senate, in any case. Bill Clinton's bid to seize the pursestrings from Congress in the 1990s with the line-item budget veto was opposed by Mr Byrd in 14 separate one-hour speeches, learned by heart, to slow up debate. He had filibustered before, the old-fashioned way: in 1964 for a straight 14 hours 13 minutes, to try to kill the Civil Rights Act.
他巧妙地與11任總統(tǒng)周旋，并且隨著年長，越來越不喜歡他們。他憎惡小布什，在伊拉克問題上，布什越過了國會的宣戰(zhàn)權，而參議院還在可憐地等待。“在這次嚴重的示弱行為后，”伯德寫道，“參議院在自己的盾上留下了不可磨滅的污點。”有些民主黨人也討不得他的歡喜。雖然他的18500票中，黨內人士居多，但他有著老南方的保守性格，和西弗吉尼亞人對煉鋼和煤礦的溫柔；而且在任何情況下，參議院優(yōu)先于黨。九十年代，比爾·克林頓曾企圖通過項目預算否決權，從國會那里接管財政，被伯德反對，并以分別的14個一小時演講，全部脫稿，拖延了議程。他以前也曾以老式的方式阻撓議事：1964年，一次長達14小時13分鐘的演講，試圖遏止人權法案。
This he later regretted. He was sorry, too, that he found himself slipping into talk of “white niggers” and “race mongrels”, and that he was exposed as an active member of the Ku Klux Klan, charging 150 friends and colleagues $10 membership and $3 robe-and-hood hire to form a chapter in 1943 in Crab Orchard, West Virginia. He had briefly joined the Klan for its anticommunism, he explained, and for the platform it gave him, a mere butcher and fiddle-player, to organise people locally. This, with his spirited playing of “Rye Whiskey” and “Turkey in the Straw”, soon got him elected to the state House of Delegates in 1946, the US House of Representatives in 1952 and, by 1958, at 40, the Senate, which through almost nine terms he never left.
之后他也對此感到后悔。他也對自己不知不覺開始大談“白黑鬼”和“黑白雜種”，還有他被揭穿是3K黨的活躍成員，1943年在西弗吉尼亞州的螃蟹果園。曾向150個朋友和同事收取10美元的會費以及會員必備的繩子和兜帽的3美元租金，表示抱歉。他解釋說，他曾經短暫的加入3K黨，因為他們的反共和他們提供給他召集本地群眾的平臺，即屠夫和小提琴手。隨著他動人的曲目《黑麥威士忌》和《草叢中的火雞》，這個平臺很快讓他在1946年被選入州參議院，1952年被選入美國眾議員，而且到了1958年，他40歲的時候，到達了參議院，并且?guī)缀跞螡M9期從未離開。
Yet his heart was in West Virginia, a poor and backward state of mountains and coal mines, where foster-parents had brought him up without power or running water and he had finished college, in a decade of night classes, five years after he joined the Senate. His years on Appropriations were spent not just juggling favours and nitpicking on procedure, but also proudly channelling money to the hills and hollows: making gravel tracks into Robert C. Byrd Freeways, turning fetid lock-ups into Robert C. Byrd Correctional Institutions, setting up the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope to look at the stars. This, too, was what the Senate was for.
然而他的心仍在西弗吉尼亞，一個多山，多煤礦的，貧窮落后的州，在那里，他的養(yǎng)父母在沒有電和自來水的情況下把他養(yǎng)大，而在他進入參議院5年后，他為期10年的夜校課程，才算讀完了。他在撥款委員會的幾年，不只是盡力幫人的忙和挑剔手續(xù)，他還把資金送到了丘陵和洼地：讓石子路變成了羅伯特·C·伯德高速公路，把惡臭的拘留所變成了羅伯特·C·伯德懲教所，設立羅伯特·C·伯德綠堤望遠鏡用來觀星。這些，也都是參議員存在的意義。
On the mountain top
In one of his weekly online columns he mused on the beauty of mountains, where God had revealed himself to Moses and Elijah had challenged the false prophets of Baal. A blogger or two pointed out that the lopped-off, naked mountains in the south of his state owed much to Mr Byrd's votes for uninhibited mining. He was unrepentant. Mining brought jobs, and burning coal kept America going. The people powered America; the Senate was the people's house; and the man who preserved the Senate, in all its glory and prodigality and arcane complexity, was Robert C. Byrd, King of Pork and senator senatorum.
有一次，在他的每周線上論壇上，他贊嘆山的壯麗，上帝就是在山上向摩西展示真身，而以利亞也是在山上挑戰(zhàn)巴力神的假先知的。幾位博客作家指出，他們南方家鄉(xiāng)的斑駁光禿的山都歸咎于伯德對無限制采礦的支持。他卻并不后悔。采礦帶來工作，而燃煤保障美國的前進。人民賦予美國力量；參議院是人民的議院；而保護參議院所有的榮光，奢侈和深不可測的那個人，正是豬肉王，參議員中的參議員，羅伯特·C·伯德。
