RALEIGH – It’s birthday time, again.
Well, that too. I did have a personal birthday recently. I share my Aquarian day of arrival with President William Henry Harrison, old “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too,” who was arguably one of the best presidents in U.S. history because, having contracted a fatal illness during his over-long inaugural address, he died before doing any damage to the Constitution or the Republic.
The birthday worth paying attention to, however, is that of the John Locke Foundation. On Friday night, we’ll celebrate our 17th anniversary with a banquet in Raleigh featuring columnist and ABC News commentator George Will. We’ll also give our traditional awards, to former Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot for leadership in public office and to Vance County citizen activist Mark Woodlief for his work defending private property rights in his community.
The John Locke Foundation has grown and changed a lot over the years. Once a small-scale operation focused on producing a newsletter, a few research papers a year, and hosting a few luncheons in Raleigh, JLF now provides a wide array of products and services designed to improve the public policy debate at the state and local levels of government, advance our founding principles of limited government and individual liberty, and promote public understanding of North Carolina’s history, economy, political institutions, and constitutional traditions.
An increasing share of our work – as measured by staff time, published materials, public events, and web traffic – is devoted to matters unrelated to legislative debates or the daily news cycle. Our North Carolina History Project now hosts a series of lectures by nationally renowned scholars, and publishes NorthCarolinaHistory.org, an educational site featuring essays, lesson plans, and a growing online encyclopedia. It receives about 8,500 visits a month. Our North Carolina Education Alliance is an outreach program that fosters in-depth discussion of testing and accountability, curriculum needs, dropout prevention, school choice, and other education-reform topics among parents, educators, community activists, and public officials. Our Locke Faculty Affiliate Network brings together scholars from public and private universities to discuss new books, research, and philosophical ideas. The E.A. Morris Fellowship for Emerging Leaders puts a dozen promising young North Carolinians each year through an intensive process of discussions, training sessions, personal-strength assessments, and community projects. Our Shaftesbury Society discussion club, hosted each Monday at JLF, offers participants a varied diet – not just of cuisine but also of speakers and topics, ranging from politics and economics to history, business, science, and the arts.
Although JLF fare now includes the likes of a lecture about Catholic influences on Shakespeare’s plays and an essay on the life of Durham businessman and community leader Asa Spaulding, we haven’t neglected our roots in public-policy research and investigative journalism. In 2006, we published 44 research papers of varying lengths. Our research analysts spoke frequently before governmental bodies, at civic clubs and community groups, and on radio and television programs across North Carolina. Carolina Journal, our flagship publication, now reaches some 160,000 readers a month in print, 22,000 unique readers a month online, and about 50,000 listeners a week with “Carolina Journal Radio” by radio broadcast and podcast. Our other communications efforts – newspaper columns, radio and TV appearances, media relations, and suite of statewide and regionally themed blog sites – reach hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians in an average week.
The best news of all is that after 17 years of hard work, we’re seeing results. For example, parents in North Carolina enjoy more choice of where to send their children to school, including open-enrollment programs within school districts and dozens of independent charter schools. And the momentum is in the direction of more school choice, not less. Many local communities and some state agencies are setting firm priorities and pursuing innovative new ways to deliver necessary public services more efficiently, thus saving the taxpayers money. Overall, government spending in North Carolina has grown since our founding in 1990 – but at a far slower rate than before. From 1974 to 1990, state spending increased 30 percent in CPI-adjusted, per-capita terms. From 1990 to 2006, it rose 18 percent.
Are we done? Not even close. North Carolina has tremendous challenges ahead. Our schools consume significant resources with disappointing results. Our roads are poorly maintained and woefully inadequate to the task of moving people and freight in growing regions. Economic change means that North Carolinians need entrepreneurs to create new jobs, new firms, perhaps entirely new industries in our state – but our public policies discourage entrepreneurial activity with wrongheaded taxes, regulations, and poor-quality public services. Most distressing, our state is full of politicians who don’t view these challenges realistically. They mistakenly think North Carolina is leading, not lagging. Some are too busy swapping government favors for bags of cash from carnies, sharpies, and special-interest lobbies.
The John Locke Foundation has a lot of work to do. We’re moving forward. Please consider joining us for the journey.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.