To the Right, March!: Jesse Helms

Monday, Sep. 14, 1981

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(10 of 10)

When he finishes, the citizens of Mocksville stand proud and applaud their elected representative nearly forever. Helms just shoos them away: "Now y'all go ahead and start eating. Don't be waiting on me.

—By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Joseph N. Boyce and Joseph J. Kane/ Raleigh and John F. Stacks/Washington

^{* In the mid-1970s, fundamentalist Christians began using "secular humanism" as a term of opprobrium for nonreligious education. It has grown into a New Rightist code word for the precepts and practices of almost anyone this side of Communism who disagrees with them, including liberals, feminists, atheists, civil libertarians, internationalists.
* According to a survey for the National Republican Committee, 25% of the U.S. agrees with New Right positions on four or five of the main "social issues": abortion, capital punishment, busing, ERA and homosexual rights. A Gallup poll in June found that one-third of Americans consider themselves at least "moderately" right-wing.
* Helms began a correspondence with the exiled novelist in 1973, which Solzhenitsyn carried on, Helms says, "at a little Russian typewriter with scratch-outs, just like we do it."}