by Alexander H. Jones | Apr 20, 2023 | Politics |
Jesse Helms never lacked pariahs to demonize. Building a political career when the legacy of segregation echoed powerfully in North Carolina, Helms promoted various Black political figures as villains in the drama of American politics. In 1984, he released dozens of...
by Alexander H. Jones | Apr 14, 2023 | Politics |
Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech had little to do with the Soviet Union. Delivered to the National Association of Evangelicals, the bulk of Reagan’s address was a feast of red meat for the Republican base’s 1980s fixations: drugs,...
by Alexander H. Jones | Apr 6, 2023 | Politics |
There have been many personal critiques of state Rep. Tricia Cotham’s character. They are well deserved, and I hope you’ll read them. But rather than her self-pitying political opportunism, I want to focus on the consequences that the newly minted...
by Alexander H. Jones | Mar 27, 2023 | Politics |
The North Carolina Capitol building cost our state over $532,000, a sum so gargantuan in the 1830s that it rendered the state legally bankrupt. Labor costs for the project, however, came in at zero. The explanation for this paradox is that our government forced...
by Alexander H. Jones | Mar 24, 2023 | Politics
In 1976, the Democratic nominee for president narrowly carried Mississippi. This man was a peanut farmer with a soft Southern drawl and a modest house in the rolling hills of Georgia. He was a white Mississippian’s idea of a good old boy, and his identity, if...
