But for the most part, not much wasrnheard from him. He was tired, it wasrnsaid, from his Sisyphean labors. ThenrnBill Clinton was elected.rnEver since, Helms has been backrnin the newspapers. Liberated from tliernbonds of loyalty to Republican Presidents,rnHelms has become quite the recidivist,rnopposing President Clinton andrnhis congressional supporters on a varietvrnof fronts. Two of his favorite issues arcrnforeign policy and federal funding forrnAIDS research.rnOn the foreign policy side. Foreign RelationsrnCommittee Chairman Helmsrnbrought President Clinton to heel in July.rnAs reported in the Wall Street ]ournal,rn”The senator has gotten [.sic] the WhiternHouse’s attention. President Clintonrnmet quietly with Mr. Helms . . . afterrnSenate Democrats blocked a vote on Mr.rnHelms’s cherished State Departmentrnreorganization plan. In retaliation, Mr.rnHelms vowed to shut down his committee,rnblocking all treaties, ambassadorialrnappointments and other business, untilrnhe got satisfaction.”rnAccording to the journal, Helms isrnturning moderate because he lunchesrnwith Secretary of State Warren Christopher.rnBut Helms is interested in morernthan foreign policy. Only Helms had therneffrontery to fight the refunding ofrnthe Ryan White bill on AIDS research.rnFunding it. Helms observed on the Senaternfloor in an unapologetic voice fromrnthe Old South, would subsidize desiancy.rnYou don’t often hear members of thernwodd’s greatest deliberative body use thernword “pervert” on the Senate floor, butrnthere it was. Officialdom was appalled.rnThe rejuvenation is easy to explain,rnformer staff members say in offering tworndifferent explanations. Some believernClinton brought Helms back to life.rnThey say Clinton tried to “play hardballrnwith the wrong person,” for as chairman.rnHelms is in a position to bring Clinton’srnforeign policy to a halt. Moreover, a leftwingrnPresident is Helms’s perfect foil.rnGranted, Clinton’s positions on everythingrnfrom most-favored-nation statusrnfor China (public enemy number one tornTaiwan-supporter Helms) to Americanrnpolicy in Haiti are hardl) distinguishablernfrom his predecessor’s, but Clinton allowsrnHelms to move to the President’srnright in ways he could not between 1980rnand 1992. Helms was always reluctant tornoppose President Reagan and Bush becausern”you’re not going to go out of thernway to question the leader of your ownrnparty,” the former staff member says.rnAlthough Helms opposed many of thernBush administration’s nominees for variousrnposts, his “displeasure was not vocal.rnHe considered George Bush a patriotrnand a fine man.”rnNot so with the man Helms said wasrnunfit to serve as Commander-in-Chief.rn”Helms was the only person I knew inrnthis town who saw a silver lining” in therncloud of Clinton’s election, the sourcernsaid. “I remember talking to him. [Hernsaid] Bill Clinton could deliver a conservativernCongress. That is something thatrnanimated him.”rnIt has, but another source savs the resurrectionrnof Jesse Helms can be traced tornthe welcome departure of chief of staffrnDarryl Nirenberg, who ran the senator’srnoffice for three years. This darker scenariornpaints Nirenberg as a moderatingrnforce who tried to protect and guidernHelms and so alienated other staff membersrnthat more than a few of them quit.rnMoreover, Nirenberg was in charge whenrnHelms purged the Foreign RelationsrnCommittee staff of its reactionary elements,rnled by Helms’s trusted aide, JimrnLucier, and replaced them with “foreignrnpolicy professionals.” “Every senior personrnleft,” another former staff memberrnsays, “because Nirenberg didn’t leave.”rnWith Nirenberg gone. Helms is back inrnaction.rnBut the former explanation highlightingrnthe election of Bill Clinton soundsrnlike a more reasonable explanation, forrnClinton also rejuvenated much of whatrnis loosely defined as the conservativernmovement. It too suffered after Reagan’srnvictory in 1980, as money dried uprnwith the perception that the good guysrnhad finally won. Now, right-wing directmailrntycoons, especially the crooks, arernrolling in the stuff that Republicanrndreams are made of.rnWhatever the reason. Helms is back atrnthe front, especially in the culture wars.rnRight-wingers have President Clinton tornthank for giving them back the mainrncongressional preacher of their old-timernreligion.rn—R. Cort KirkwoodrnPOET ZBIGNIEW HERBERT andrnhistorian Frangois Furet are the recipientsrnof the 1995 Ingersoll Prizes. Herbertrnwill receive the T.S. Eliot Award forrnCreative Writing; Furet, the Richard M.rnWeaver Award for Scholarly Letters.rnThe awards, each of which carries a cashrnprize of $20,000, recognize writers ofrnabiding importance whose works affirmrnthe fundamental principles of Westernrncivilization.rnZbigniew Herbert was born in Lvov,rnPoland, in 1924 and educated at the Universityrnof Cracow, the University of Warsaw,rnand the Nicholas Copernicus Universityrnof Torun. During World War II,rnhe fought the Nazis as a member of thernPolish underground. Herbert launchedrnhis literary career in 19′>5 as a writer forrnthe journal Tworczosc, and a year laterrnpublished his first book of poems, ArnStory of Light. His numerous publicationsrnsince then include a play. ThernPhilosopher’s Den (1958), Report fromrnthe Besieged City and Other Poemsrn(1985), and a book of essays entitled Barbarianrnin the Garden (1985). In an essayrnon Herbert, critic A. Alvarez wrote, “Hernis an avant-garde poet whose experimentsrnand precise, restrained rhythmsrnhave sent Polish prosody off in a newrndirection.”rnSpeaking on behalf of the jury,rnThomas Fleming (executive secretary ofrnthe Ingersoll Prizes) described Herbert asrn”a classical modernist in the traditionrnof T.S. Eliot: with one eve on classicalrnantiquity and its lessons, Herbert has,rnnonetheless, been a socially and politicallyrncommitted poet grappling withrnthe dark age in which he lived.” Alludingrnto Herbert’s fierce resistance to bothrnNazism and Communism, Fleming saidrnthat the poet had displayed “a heroismrnthat approached moral grandeur. ZbigniewrnHerbert, in struggling against dehumanizingrnideologies, including thernideology of consumerism, has becomernthe conscience not onlv of Poland but ofrnthe West.”rnFrangois Furet was born in 1927 andrnreceived his education in Paris. In additionrnto running the Ecole dcs HautesrnEtudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris,rnFuret has been director of the InstitutrnRaymond Aron for the past ten years andrna member of the University of Chicago’srnCommittee on Social Thought sincern1985. The author of a major revisionistrnstudy of the demise of the ancien regime,rnInterpreting the French Revolutionrn(1981), Furet is also the editor of UnansweredrnQuestions, a collection of essaysrndealing with the holocaust, and authorrnof many other titles, including The Revolutionrn(1965), In the Workshop of Historyrn(1981), Marx and the French Revolutionrn(1988), and Revolutionarv France 1770-rn1880 (1992). In collaboration with Monarn6/CHRONICLESrnrnrn