Three for the Holiday

John Hood

July 3, 2006

RALEIGH – July 4th is a celebration of William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, and John Penn.

Well, it’s not just a celebration of Hooper, Hewes, and Penn. But it’s certainly more than a celebration of hot dogs, flags, and Thomas Jefferson (which happen to be three of my favorites). Independence Day commemorates one of the most profound acts of political courage in world history, an act that married John Locke’s principles of liberty and limited government with Algernon Sidney’s call for righteous revolution.

There were 56 names on that document. Three of them were from North Carolina. You can read more about William Hooper at NCHistory.org, an online guide to North Carolina history created by the John Locke Foundation earlier this year. I’ll be back Wednesday with a fresh Daily Journal. Happy Locke & Liberty Day!

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.

More from John Hood

Opinion

Politics should be less important

It might sound odd to hear this from someone who’s been writing a syndicated column on politics for nearly four decades, but politics has become vastly more important in our lives than it should be. Virtually every decision we make in our ostensibly free society is now subject to review, refinement, and reversal by some...

John Hood

Opinion

State gets pleasant April surprise

I’ve never been more delighted to be mistaken. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column observing that, over the first eight months of the 2023-24 fiscal year, the state’s General Fund revenue was down slightly from what was collected during the first eight months of the previous fiscal year. North Carolina faced no...

John Hood

Opinion

Job needs propel college reforms

I’ve long been bullish on North Carolina’s community colleges. In the past, I’ve praised the system’s cost-effectiveness, its capacity to serve nontraditional students, and the impressive labor-market returns for associate degrees and certificates in such fields as industrial technology, home repair, computer sciences, and health care. Today, I’ll offer you three pieces of good news...

John Hood

Opinion

Cities differ on public safety tech

The police department in Winston-Salem uses a commercial product called ShotSpotter, a network of audio sensors and software, to identify possible incidents of gunfire and ensure a faster response to them. Since its implementation in 2021, the system appears to have reduced the number of aggravated assaults and saved at least two lives of gunshot...

John Hood