RALEIGH – Dear Republican member of the North Carolina General Assembly:

Whether you are a veteran or a freshman making your first trip to Raleigh next week for the beginning of a legislative session, you are about to have a novel experience: real power in Raleigh. Even the few GOP House members who were around for the party’s brief period of ascendancy in the 1990s have never been in the position of working with a Republican Senate.

As you get ready for the session’s opening, consider this line from P.J. O’Rourke: “The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.”

Of course, you didn’t really seek election to the General Assembly on the platform that government never works, only that it often fails at functions for which it is ill-suited. If you thought government was useless and public service a doomed endeavor, you wouldn’t have run in the first place.

Still, O’Rourke’s admonition is a useful one as you prepare for the 2011 session. Keep in mind that Raleigh has been a Democratic town for more than a century. It is full of people who both expect and want you to fail. It is full of public and private institutions built around the assumption that government action and social progress are synonymous. These institutions are led by individuals who sincerely believe state government is too small and does too little – and who expect to derive income from the expansion of that government, either through direct subsidy or self-serving regulation.

If you ran for the legislature on a platform of restraining spending and taxes, reducing regulation, and expanding consumer choice in education and health care, you ran against most of the Raleigh establishment. Don’t expect succor or applause from it. It will seek to block, undercut, subvert, or seduce you to abandon your principles. Its leaders considered themselves to be virtuous, and you to be vicious. Thus they will feel justified in using virtually any means necessary to defeat you.

In truth, as the session progresses, you will find a firm commitment to your principles to be inconvenient. Such a commitment will make it harder to strike deals, overcome roadblocks, make new friends, raise political contributions, defuse tensions, do favors for your constituents, and get favorable press.

Why do you think so many politicians end up abandoning their principles? It isn’t because they lacked good intentions or praiseworthy virtues. It’s because sticking to principle is hard work. Many aren’t up to the task. Principled political leaders are about as common as successful dieters, for similar reasons.

To stay on your ethical diet, remind yourself on a regular basis that:

• You ran for office not to obtain more power over the lives of your fellow citizens, but to restrain the power that already exists, exercise it more judiciously, and increase the liberty of your fellow citizens. North Carolinians don’t need you to parent them, bless them, or give their lives meaning.

• You ran for office to serve, not to be served. Everyone is susceptible to the temptations of perpetual incumbency. “Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “a rottenness begins in his conduct.” If you find yourself worrying that speaking or voting how you really feel might cost you a committee post, or perhaps even your seat at the next election, consider making plans for your political retirement. It’ll be time.

• You can be critical about the modern exercise of governmental power without being “anti-government.” Most North Carolinians, including most North Carolina conservatives, believe state government has a constitutional obligation to ensure the delivery of core services such as public safety, education, and a safety net designed to alleviate immediate harm and protect public order, not ensnare able-bodied citizens in a cycle of dependency. Your intention is to find ways to deliver these core services more effectively, at lower cost, and with greater regard for the benefits of competition and consumer choice.

• Playground ethics is for kids. You’re an adult. “He started it!” and “I’ll make them pay for what they did to me!” are not acceptable excuses for abusing your power. If you were in the minority during Democratic governance, remember what it felt like to have your right to speak, legislate, and represent your constituents restricted by unfair rules – and resolve never to do it to your Democratic colleagues. Will open government make it harder to pass your favorite bills? Quite possibly. Embrace it anyway.

• Don’t expect conservative activists, organizations, and voters to give you a pass. GOP victories in 2010 were more a public renunciation of Democrats than a public embrace of Republicans. If you don’t follow through on your promises, you won’t be in power long.

And as a matter of personal privilege: while my colleagues and I at the John Locke Foundation stand ready to answer your questions, suggest freedom-enhancing policy ideas, and call attention to your freedom-enhancing policy ideas, we are not political partisans. If you offer legislation inconsistent with our governing principles of competition, innovation, personal freedom, and personal responsibility, we’ll criticize you for it. If you exhibit the kind of unethical behavior that some of your Democratic predecessors engaged in, expect to read about it on the front page of Carolina Journal.

Because we recognize the inherently corrupting nature of political power, we believe it to be not only in the interest of the general public but also of politicians themselves that there be independent watchdogs. If political principle is like a diet, think of us as akin the personal trainers on The Biggest Loser who push, prod, and sometimes yell to keep their dieters on course.

Ready? Okay, grab those barbells and start lifting!

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.