Broder said what needs to be said. Helms' solid anti-communism and passion for small government and individual liberty can all be defended. As propositions, I agreed with many of them. But the entire point of Helms's defense of freedom was inseparable, alas, from his bigotry. It was the freedom to suppress and segregate the "other" that he valued most of all.
It's also worth recalling who created and ran Helms' most famous racist ad against Harvey Gantt in 1990. You can see one of the architects of the racist campaign on CNN all the time - Alex Castellanos - and the other on Fox - Dick Morris. If Helms was a racist for running that ad, so are those two. And no one seems to call them on it.