This post by some guy named James Antle at the American Spectator's Blog gets the tone about right, I think:
"Helms did have an actual, regrettable record as a racial segregationist early in his career (though he did in fact shift toward color-blind rhetoric and policies later in his career, even if he didn't apologize for his past statements). He defended policies that hurt and denied opportunities to his black fellow Americans. Conservatives should not minimize that or pretend he was an early Ward Connerly. Neither should they discard all recognition of Helms's real, substantial, and, yes, admirable accomplishments just because he was, like all of us, a product of his time and place."
(My only quibble here is that I think the "product of time and place" argument grows less convincing as interconnectivity through technology increases. Obviously, a kid raised in Massachusetts in the 1940's has a much different experience than a kid raised in Alabama, but as time goes on I think that experiential gap decreases. In other words, the "product of time and place" argument holds truer for, say, Thomas Jefferson than it does for Jesse Helms, and truer for Jesse Helms than it does for us.)
National Review's adulatory coverage of his death and life seems to be suggesting that anyone who points out his racist past and tendencies is a frothing mad leftist liberal, and runs the deeper risk of conflating "states rights" arguments with segregation as part of the pantheon of conservative positions. Many of the conservatives I have known (among those, ones I have respected and worked for) seem all too willing to wax nostalgic about their Dixie roots, unaware of the damage and perceptions they cast of themselves. This, to put it mildly, is a problem.
