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Article: Jesse Helms, R.I.P.(Obituary)(Brief article)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- August 4, 2008
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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JESSE HELMS began his political career, as one of North Carolina's most popular radio commentators, upholding the politics of segregation. There are second acts in American lives, pace F. Scott Fitzgerald, though in the wake of Helms's death, liberals have been unwilling to forget his first act. Nor should it be forgotten: Segregation was a bad system that did not want to die; Helms--and the early NATIONAL REVIEW--defended its right to live.
This does not mean that Helms's spirited opposition, after he had become a senator, to affirmative action-most pungently expressed in the white-hands ad he ran in his 1990 race with Harvey Gantt--is invalidated by his past. ...