More, more, more!

Because I find this topic so rife for posting, here is more on Helms, Republicans, Democrats, etc. from Jonah Goldberg (who was not a huge Helms fan):

But here's the thing. The reader who ticked me off yesterday cited no evidence that Helms was a "stain on conservatism," he merely took it as a given. Others cite Helms' opposition to the Martin Luther King holiday and his 1990 ad with the white hands. I don't consider either of these things racist in and of themselves. Indeed, like the Willie Horton ad, I consider them examples that liberals cite over and over again as racist as if doing so will simply make it true. Now, as for other Helm's positions and comments, I think it is very hard indeed to defend the man. In other words, I'm not sure the "stain" spreads nearly so far as the left insists. If having men with racist pasts on your team is, in and of itself, a stain, where are the liberal washerwomen going after Bill Clinton's mentor William Fulbright, Robert Byrd or for that matter Jeremiah Wright? In short, these things are more complicated than the simplistic morality tale in which conservatives are evil and liberals are good (hey, I think someone wrote a book about this).

Indeed, I grow weary at the constant liberal browbeating administered to conservatives to not only apologize for the racist skeletons in our closet but the insistence that those skeletons define modern conservatism, particularly when liberals insist that liberalism has no skeletons whatsoever (which is, simply, a Big Lie). That's what I took to be going on in that e-mail. But, again, I was wrong. Or rather, that's not all that was going on.

Still, after thinking about it. I think the conservative celebration of Helms has been too hagiographic, just as I think the left’s demonization has been too two-dimensional. Helms was the product of his times and upbringing, just as Fulbright and Byrd were. The difference is that liberals think it’s childish to point such things out about Democrats, but it’s all you need to know about Helms – and the GOP.