I don’t know how many major American politicians have died on Independence Day. The most famous examples, of course, are Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who both died on July 4th, within a few hours of each other, half a century after the signing. But whatever the number is, there’s now one more. Here are some more thoughts on the man, written in February, in the context of a review of a biography that came out several months ago.

I was never a big fan–while I think that the complaints about the affirmative action campaign ad were overblown, I do agree with John Hood’s assessment:

…by mixing a defense of property rights with less-savory references to “Negro agitators,” out-of-state provocateurs, and Martin Luther King’s subversive friends, Helms and other Southern commentators ended up weakening the very limited-government principles they espoused, with unfortunate and lasting consequences for American liberty. To make a truly persuasive libertarian case against federal regulation of private business decisions, it would have been necessary to marry every criticism of government overreaching with calls for the South’s social and moral transformation and clear denunciations of racist business owners. Given that the segregation syndrome was largely the work of decades of intrusive laws and electoral abuses by state and local governments, there was at least a plausible conservative case to be made not just for federal intervention, but also for anti-discrimination laws to dismantle white supremacy and remedy the social and economic consequences of past state coercion.

Yes.

But he was also, by all accounts a kind and personable man, and a tireless fighter for human freedom as well, as the Solzhenitsyn story reveals. As one of those who helped win the Cold War, that part of his legacy shouldn’t be overlooked by those who can only blindly (and probably unfairly, given all the caricatures) perceive a racist.