RALEIGH – To all my (secret) liberal friends: Please consider the following statement to be a comprehensive explanation of why I have been saying and doing so many outrageous things over the past 25 years.
Let me begin with two confessions. In my heart, I am a Leftist. I am also a cowardly sell-out.
I came to my big-government beliefs the same way many of you did – while as a college student, in my case at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a member of the UNC debate team, I spent years traveling the tournament circuit and crafting the best arguments I could for radical environmentalism, socialism, pacifism, and other causes I knew to be popular among the professors who judged the debates.
At first, my goal was simply to tell the judges what they wanted to hear so I’d have a better chance of winning the debate. But over time, I came to believe that what I had been saying for self-serving reasons was actually the truth. Capitalism was destroying the planet. Voluntary commerce was exploitation. Elevating the principle of individual freedom above that of absolute equality of opportunity and result was just a means of preserving plutocratic privilege.
I had become a full-fledged Leftist. However, the seeds of my cowardice had also been planted. Already used to crafting political arguments purely as a means of advancing my own ends, rather than as an expression of my true beliefs, I found that I couldn’t stop myself.
When my personal goals shifted from winning debate tournaments to earning a living, I found that the treasuries of corporate fat cats were easier to tap than the assets of liberal foundations. So I pretended to become a libertarian, or a conservative, or whatever it took to score grant money from right-of-center donors and organizations. I have continued this practice for more than two decades, to my secret shame.
My first foray into the profession of capitalist shill occurred while still on campus. In 1987 I convinced a few friends to join me in founding The Carolina Critic, a new student magazine at UNC-Chapel Hill. Within two years, we were publishing campus editions at North Carolina State, Wake Forest University, UNC-Greensboro, and UNC-Charlotte. Many of the student journalists who got their start working at the Critic went on to successful journalism careers in places such as Washington, New York, and California. Some of them still work for me today here in North Carolina.
None of it would have been possible had we not stuck to the free-market, limited-government philosophy that our corporate paymasters expected. Yes, I knew it was all nonsense. I knew that freedom was really slavery, that ignorance was really strength, but how could I afford to admit it in print? Surely you can understand my predicament.
It only got worse. After stints as a newspaper and magazine reporter, I returned to North Carolina to help start the John Locke Foundation, which promised to do at the state level what the noxious Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute were doing in Washington – reshaping the contours of political discourse in ways designed to make free-market ideas more attractive to politicians and voters alike.
My personal conflict intensified. Every time I considered shedding my cover story and expressing what I really thought, another corporate lackey would show up to stuff my pockets with cash or slide envelopes under my door with checks worth thousands of dollars.
Everyone knows, for example, that the Earth is warming rapidly because of rising emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, and that such climate change will inevitably cause floods, droughts, excessive heat, excessive cold, storms, calms, and cats and dogs living together. But I can’t say that – I’d never raise money again from Big Oil, Big Coal, or Big Cattle.
Similarly, Big Pharma pays me to question the performance of the FDA, Big Prep pays me to espouse parental choice in education, and Big Bird pays me to oppose excessive regulation of poultry processing plants.
Look, folks, I know you are mad at me for selling out. But I have two kids to send to college, a mortgage, and a musical-theater habit to finance. I can’t afford to come out of the closet and say what I really think.
Someday, perhaps. In the meantime, I’m really, really sorry.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.