Hitchens On Helms

Whatever Christopher Hitchens writes is worth reading, even (especially) if I disagree with what he says in a particular article. Consider his views on the passing of Senator Jesse Helms, who died on July 4.

"It seemed somehow profane that Sen. Jesse Helms should have managed to depart this life on the 232nd anniversary of the declaration of American independence. To die on the Fourth of July, one can perhaps be forgiven for feeling, is or ought to be a privilege reserved for men of the stamp of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom expired on that day in 1826, 50 years after the promulgation of the declaration. One doesn't want the occasion sullied by the obsequies for a senile racist buffoon." Noting that, among other things, Helms opposed the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday and defended white Rhodesia, Hitchens writes, "The way to mark Helms' passing is to recognize that he prolonged the life of the old segregated South and the Dixiecrat ascendancy and that in his own person, not unlike Strom Thurmond, he personified much of its absurdity and redundancy."