I could probably not be called a big fan of Jesse Helms, having driven all the way across the country in 1990 to volunteer for his Democratic opponent Harvey Gantt in the North Carolina U.S. senatorial race that year. The infamous "hands ad", with white hands crumpling a paper because "racial quotas" gave the job to someone else, I saw on a TV in North Carolina during that campaign: and it was unpleasant, believe me.
And he was not an especially gallant opponent, unlike, say, William F. Buckley, Jr.; although I have joked before that a Jesse Jackson/Jesse Helms ticket would be the ultimate in balance and diversity, Helms' bigotry in racial and sexual orientation matters, among other things, does not cut a very fine record. We know this.
Still, he didn't have horns. He adopted a lonely child with cerebral palsy. He worked with Bono on international debt relief, and after meeting Bono apologized for his meanness about AIDS.
And what do we see on DKos today? Any number of ugly, hatemongering diaries about "Jesse Helms burn in hell" or such, that I'm not even going to link to. Pretty low, if you ask me.
I mean, probably few people here can say they went to the lengths I did to directly oppose Helms, i.e., driving a beat-up old car from one coast to another to volunteer against the man. But do you see me spitting on him today, or wishing he is being roasted in Hades on a spit like the spits people are using for their July 4th barbecues? Hopefully my parents raised me better than that.
This community can be very decent, but I'm not seeing much of that today. On Independence Day, we should recognize the humanity of even those who use their American freedom to disagree with us in huge ways, and ways that are not always nice. Are we so sinless that we should be casting stones?
Have a nice holiday, and God bless you and your families. Even if all of us do not always agree on everything, we're all still Americans, and that should mean something.