Posted by
Bert Chapman on Friday, July 11, 2008 9:43:11 AM
While I was away on vacation, I heard the sad news about Jesse Helms death. I was especially struck by the providential timing of his dying on July 4 like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Jesse Helms was the all to rare conviction politician and policymaker. He was willing to stand alone in the face of torrential liberal hostility for what he saw as right morally and for sound public policy. Many reports appearing in the conservative print and electronic media have also justifiably praised Helms for his personal amiability and how he treated his senatorial staff with courtesy and respect. Make no mistake, Helms could be hard-nosed. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he worked to ensure that the State Department looked out for U.S. national interests first instead of pandering to continually shifting foreign and international public opinion. He also worked diligently to reform the United Nations wasteful bureaucracy and to ensure that this organization made some attempt to be a reasonably effective contributor to international well-being instead of generating empty rhetorical resolutions. Helms also was willing to incur the enmity of the liberal civil rights lobby because he believed that blacks and members of other minority groups should be treated as individuals with limitless innate God-given potential instead as pathetic victims of white patriarchal hegemony and repression. Helms played a major role in the ascendancy of conservatism in the South and the presence of conservative Republican federal and state legislators in such large numbers is directly attributable to Helm's repeated senatorial electoral victories and sound performance in office.
I want to extend my own sympathy to Helms family, friends, and associates as they celebrate his life and mourn his earthly death.