A new spiritual leader of the moment

Half-staff? I got your half-staff right here!

They say it is wrong to speak ill of the dead and that if you can't say something nice you shouldn't say anything at all ( or alternatively, you should go and sit next to Dorothy Parker). Like many others, I was torn this week when Sen. Jesse Helms shuffled off this mortal coil. Should I pile on the facts about how he was one of the most noxious racists of the twentieth century? How he conspired to keep the United Nations from running family planning programs in the third world by blocking the United States from paying over a billion dollars in UN dues? How as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he kept the U.S. out of the World Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocol, blocked ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and other arms control treaties?  How he blocked access to and information about abortion worldwide?  How he helped the spread of AIDS? How he managed to make things worse in Cuba by trying to force other nations to boycott the benighted island through his "Helm-Burton Act"?  Should I point out that he was the main supporter of  Central American death squad czar Roberto d'Aubuisson ?

Should I take the low road, like Tbogg? Or the high road like Clif?

Then David from over at JimDandy Goodness pointed out this story to me. 

"I don't see how anybody could celebrate his career," the 51-year-old said in an interview, noting Helms opposition tothe 1964 Civil Rights Act and the filibuster to stall the effort to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday. "Everything he did was such a disservice to this state"

Eason, who had worked for 29 years at the Department of Agriculture, requested the option to retire Monday after his superiors overruled his decision and ordered the flags be lowered. Eason wrote an e-mail tothe governor and other supervisors saying he could not in good conscience honor Helms.

This man, L.F. Eason III is no shrill liberal blogger or ideologue, he's just a guy who was willing to chuck his nearly 30-year career rather than honor an evil man. Call him inflexible, call him unreasonable if you will --We here at the woodshed call him our Spiritual Leader of the Moment.