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Modern Era
Showing results: 1 to 11 out of 11
"Senator Sam" Continues to Offer Lessons of Authenticity Commentary
"Yes, I was born right over there. You can see I haven't gotten very far in life," remarked former Sen. Sam Ervin while pointing to his birthplace, a white house across the street from his residence in Morganton.
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2011 General Assembly Is More Momentous Than You May Think Commentary
In January 2011, the Republican Party of North Carolina took control of both houses in the General Assembly. Many have stated that Republicans haven't been in this position since the 1890s. Truth be told, the last time was the late 1860s.
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Champions of Freedom: Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Jesse Helms Commentary
Nobel Laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn and US Senator Jesse Helms spent more than one-half of their lives without an awareness of each other's existence. They spoke different languages. They met only a few times, yet they forged a relationship that allowed them to help shape events that brought down one of the world's most powerful governments. By examining the commonalities of these two men, their relationship, and their shared values, we can gain an understanding of their passion and the importance of their message for all of us today.
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Comparing the Occupy Movement to Our Regulator Rebellion Commentary
America's difficult economic situation has generated often contradictory reactions and proposed solutions. One part of America blames the big banks. Another points to the government. Still others, with a more subtle insight, find fault with the combination of big government and big corporations. All this reminded me of the protests during the 1760s and early 1770s in Piedmont North Carolina called the Regulator Rebellion.
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A Tar Heel in Cloak: George Watts Hill, Interventionism, and the Shadow War Against Hitler Commentary
Scion of a distinguished North Carolina family (“Durham’s first family”), George Watts Hill played a key role in the secret war against Hitler. For his effective work and efficient administration, the Italian and French governments respectively awarded him the Cross of War Merit and the Legion of Merit.
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How Jesse Helms Made the Reagan Revolution Possible Commentary
Thirty-five years ago, on March 23, 1976, voters in North Carolina helped shape the course of history. Their decision to support the presidential hopes of former California Gov. Ronald Reagan in the Republican presidential primary kept Reagan in the race for the 1976 GOP nomination and opened the way for his 1980 election as the 40th president of the United States.
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Josiah Bailey and the Creation of a Post-World War II Conservatism Commentary
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had many fans, but North Carolina Senator Josiah Bailey, an author of the Conservative Manifesto of 1937, was not one. In a letter to anti-New Dealer Senator Peter G. Gerry of Rhode Island, Bailey wrote, “Our President is not actuated by principle, but by fears. He will try to head off anything in order that he may stay at the head.”
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Keep the Focus Closer to Home Commentary
All the name-calling, finger-pointing, dealmaking, and hollow sound bites during the recent debt-ceiling debate led me to conclude this: If Americans keep looking to Washington for all the answers, we shouldn't expect anything better from politicians who seem more worried about the 2012 election than the nation's future.
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Limits of Liberalism Commentary
North Carolina's conservatism in the 1930s contradicts the state's progressive image, or rather, the myth of its progressivism, born of developments before and after the 1930s. The conservative opposition to the New Deal created momentum for a postwar conservatism and a viable two-party competition in the state. Genuine liberalism, New Deal or otherwise, one could argue, has yet to capture the Tar Heel state.
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Senator Robert Rice Reynolds: An Atypical Tar Heel Politician and Isolationist Commentary
A most atypical southern politician and U. S. Senator from 1933 to 1945, Robert Rice Reynolds was an unabashed isolationist and Anglophobe, whose foreign policy positions, not economic ones, alienated him from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Reynolds’s notorious womanizing and five marriages, opposition to Prohibition, flamboyant actions, and non-racist demagoguery set him apart from the straight-laced, Tar Heel politicians, who supported FDR’s aid-to-Britain policies.
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Speaker Ban Law Commentary
Enacted in 1963, the Speaker Ban was a North Carolina state law that restricted the appearance of Communists and other radical speakers at state-supported campuses, including the University of North Carolina. The Speaker Ban sparked a major controversy over Communism, academic freedom, and the First Amendment.
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