Gee Hitchens, why don't you and the Queen of England tell us how you really felt about that North Carolinian champion Senator Jesse Helms? I did not know him very well, living in the Midwest among Chicago Democrats and Suburban "Collar County" Repubs early in life, and then moving to New England, where both the Democrats and the Republicans have always proven to be highly offensive to my Midwestern sensibilities. By the way, I am 53 years of age, and I "grew up" in "separate but equal" America. Comparing times then, to the way things are in this Country now, I would choose to roll things back in a heartbeat. I am sure most people would, especially those who are old enough to compare and contrast. I just recently read, that circa 1940s or 1950s, America was 85 percent "White" whatever that means, whereas now, American voters are maybe 45 percent White. That explains a lot to me, as to how this Country has changed, and why both of America's major political Parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, think they can write off my urban, ethnic male "white" vote and get away with it. It's because they really can, apparently. I am outnumbered, and this is news to me. I never could figure it out until coming across that statistic. Of course, the Queen's Feminism is designed to further marginalize my urban, ethnic White Male vote, as is the "winner takes it all" gerrymandered and totally unproportional 2-Party system of electioneering. Nixon used to purport to speak for the "Silent Majority" and while I never quite counted myself in the Nixon camp, I found his idea intriguing. Again, when Ronald Reagan was elected, I never felt very comfortable about many of the policies and the people he brought into government, but Reagan had a knack of speaking to my concerns and points of view, at least on occasion.
Whenever I listen to Liberal Democrats speak to their genuine policy prescriptions, points of view, and governing principles, I take issue with them, almost without exception. Abortion, for one example, is an absolutely horrible and unnecessary outcropping of Liberal thought that I refuse to accept as necessary. Feminism, as well, is an ideology that is best jettisoned, rather than kept, in my view. And as I mentioned, separate but equal sounds pretty good to me, based on my experiences post-Martin Luther King, who was not an American hero in my book. He came to Chicago from Atlanta to make trouble, just as Jimmy Carter did a generation later, as I see it. In fact, Atlanta was built up precisely in mimickry of Chicago, by Jimmy Carter, and Andrew Young, and all the other so-called progressives who specialized in disarming my world view, and then taking my world and making it their own. This has happened again and again, over and over, and people like me are supposed to just go along with it, as though it is not really as it seems. Unfortunately, the truth is that Lyndon Johnson was blackmailed to endorse the original Martin Luther King era civil rights amendment. Further, it was the Democratic Party, with it's Southern White Franchise of Legislative Leaders, who enabled 100 years of Jim Crow - which kept Southern Blacks in de facto servitude, not White Northerners. The political results of Johnson's move, and the collapse of separate but equal, included the rise of the mean spirited Republican Party, so ungodly conservative today, it is unrecognizable to anyone who considered themselves mainstream Republican, let alone Rockefeller Republican, back in Richard Nixon's day. It also resulted in this rap music, which with rare exceptions, I really cannot stand. Personally speaking, I am amazed that it has lasted as long as it has, that it has made so many people so wealthy, that it has never improved or developed into a reasonably attractive musical genre, and that it has travelled the world. I would have thought foreign people and cultures had more good sense and good taste, than to embrace such a rotten and poisonous style of music. I could just quote Ice Cube or Ice T or whatever his name is, on a talk show, on his return Stateside from a concert sojourn to Japan, where he honestly admitted that he enjoyed "corrupting" those innocent little Japanese teenagers. If that is how he thinks about his show business career effects over there in Japan, surely he must think in similar terms about his entertainment industry work as a "role model" here in America. And of course, he is rich. Typically American, it is "all about the money."
I do not much care for Christopher Hitchens holding forth as to the character or the conservative politics or the courtly or mannerly or elderly nature of Jesse Helms. Helms was 30 years older than myself, and he had that perspective on life, that younger Americans lack. When I heard Jesse Helms speak on a concern or issue, which was quite rarely, I found myself in agreement with him, and not just a little, but wholeheartedly. Jesse Helms was a good man, with a very respectable point of view, and entirely defensible politics. That he made use of a little bit of race baiting campaign advertisement at one point in his career, can be said to have highlighted the job preferencing systems at that time, which have since been circumscribed or otherwise modified by the U.S. Supreme Court. Anyway, that was the work of Dick Morris, according to Chris Hitchens, and Hitch ought to know how campaign consultants, for better or for worse, tend to run the candidate during campaign seasons. Helms as I recall, was in a very tight race on that occasion. Morris is working overtime nowadays, dissing the Democrats. Why, I have received e-mails from him twice in the last two days, courtesy of NewsMax. For weeks, they were highly uncomplementary about Hillary Clinton. Now, they all seem to target Barack Obama; go figure. In my own view, Hillary Clinton was at least as much from Illinois as Obama, maybe moreso: She grew up in Park Ridge Illinois, and later as I believe, in Winnetka, Illinois. I am sure that as my President, Hillary Clinton and I would have been "Sympatico." I have my most sincere doubts about Barack Obama and his entourage, which now includes a Senate Democratic Leader from West Virginia, named Robert Byrd. I used to like and respect him, but since he endorsed Obama, contrasting mightily with the two-to-one vote in West Virginia favoring Hillary Clinton, I have lost my love of the guy, politically. Who knows but that if Jesse Helms had lived long enough, and remained in the Senate contemporaneous with Byrd, Helms himself might have ended up endorsing Barack Obama? But it was not to be, and so, I can continue to admire Jesse Helms for the straight arrow conservative Senator who, much like Harry Truman of an earlier age, "Gave 'em hell." You know, I much prefer the folks who tell you where they stand politically, and stand and take the slings and arrows, as compared to the modern, triangulating, poll-driven politicians, who do not know bipartisanship in the least, and could care less. I am certain there were plenty of times, when Jesse Helms worked quietly and effectively, "across the aisle" as they say, to good effect with those of his opponents in the other Party, those Democrats. He might have even worked with Ted Kennedy on occasion, or had his people working with Teddy's people, more probably.
As such, I think the poison pen diatribe Christopher Hitchens writes today about Jesse Helms, certainly betrays more about the politics of Hitch and the Queen, than it does about Senator Helms. Sir Hitch the Queen's Subject may not quite understand American culture, politics, or diversity, given that he is more a follower of the "royals" then a citizen of a democratic republic. But then, I could say that about a great many so-called Americans nowadays. I would include among such Anglo-Americans, surprisingly, Ronald Reagan, who immediately after his Presidency, made "a bee line" out to be knighted by the Queen for supporting the British military expedition to the Falklands Islands, to take back that little speck of sheep grazing land from Argentina. I will assert right now, that when I am elected American President, I will make my first order of business, to return the Malvinas Islands to Argentinian or Patagonian spheres of influence.
But Sir Hitchens similarly rode out to do battle with the dragon that was Saint or Mother Theresa of Calcutta, India, didn't he? I have to say, this Hitch fella sure knows how to pick 'em. Didn't Mother Theresa found the Order of nuns that continues to feed, clothe, and care for the poor of Calcutta today? Mother Theresa, like Jesse Helms, proved true to herself, and with her thereby integrated personality, proved to be a highly effective role model and leader. If you have religion and faith and a belief in God, you have your own strength of not only conviction, but of action. Much like Jesse Helms and Mother Theresa. Maybe that is what folks like the Queen of England and Christopher Hitchens find so objectionable, even and especially in death, when it comes to Jesse Helms and Mother Theresa: that they each set such a good example. Each may have left this World as we know it; and each can yet look down on this Earth, from their vantage point in Heaven, enjoy a marvelous and complete sense of accomplishment. Each of them set a fine example for the rest of us, Christopher Hitchens notwithstanding.
