I've Got Your Convictions Right Here

I heard Mike Huckabee the other day say that what Barack Obama needs to do is to show convictions and stay true to his core beliefs, like Jesse Helms. Since those core beliefs involved him being an unapologetic racist, I thought it was slightly inappropriate. But if Huckabee wants to rephrase that, I actually do have a model for courage and conviction, and it's L.F. Eason III.

L.F. Eason III gave up the only job he'd ever had rather than lower a flag to honor former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms.

Eason, a 29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday, as called for in a directive to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley.

When a superior ordered the lab to follow the directive, Eason decided to retire rather than pay tribute to Helms. After several hours' delay, one of Eason's employees hung the flags at half-staff.

The brouhaha began late Sunday night, when Eason e-mailed eight of his employees in the state standards lab, which calibrates measuring equipment used on things as widely varied as gasoline and hamburgers.

"Regardless of any executive proclamation, I do not want the flags at the North Carolina Standards Laboratory flown at half staff to honor Jesse Helms any time this week," Eason wrote just after midnight, according to e-mail messages released in response to a public records request.

He told his staff that he did not think it was appropriate to honor Helms because of his "doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice" and his opposition to civil rights bills and the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

Here's a guy that gave up everything he had and everything he'd ever known out of the principle of calling bigotry by its name. Seeing that Sen. Obama today capitulated on the Constitutional right of persons to be safe and secure in their homes, I'd say he could learn a lesson from this man. So could Mike Huckabee. Alternatively, he could do what conservatives have been doing for decades and call the black guy a Commie. The problem with that, of course, is that Eason is white.