How Jesse Helms Made A Difference

by John Fund - July 5th, 2008 - The Wall Street Journal

The issue of race will always cast a shadow on Helms's legacy. He could never understand why he was viewed by many as a bigot, having run one of the most integrated TV stations in the South and often hiring blacks on his staff [and treating them with dignity as equals]. His criticisms of affirmative action and forced busing were on the mark.

[snip]

Indeed, the mainstream media rarely put Helms's career in context the way they did, for example, with Sam Ervin, a Democrat who served with Helms in the Senate from North Carolina before retiring in 1975. Ervin was the leading legal strategist against Civil Rights legislation, and he largely crafted the Southern Manifesto against Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court case that ruled school segregation unconstitutional. But Ervin was the man who chaired the Watergate hearings that helped bring down Richard Nixon, and his views on civil rights were almost never mentioned. Both Helms and Ervin were courtly, principled conservatives. Only one became a cartoon media villain.

The differing treatment of these two men shows beyond dispute the bigotry of the MSM and the Democrat Party. It is not about racism. It is about Marxism. Black leadership in America is overwhelmingly Marxist, and they forgive anyone who embraces the Marxist program of the Democrat Party. They denounce as "racist" anyone who defends free enterprise and religion, the prevailing premise of the Republicans who most incite the bigoted rage of black democrats. The only prevalent racism today is the racism of black leadership. Helms could never overcome that flaw, a flaw not of Helms, but of his enemies.