There’s a saying that history is always written by the winners. In North Carolina, Republicans are trying to re-write history. It’s called revisionist history and to hear them tell it, the Democrats who ran the state throughout the latter half of the twentieth century had little to do with the success and praise the state received.

In fact, the Republicans argue that the state wasn’t that much better than the rest of the South. Yesterday, a conservative argued that downtown Raleigh would have developed similarly without the smart growth policies of Mayor Charles Meeker and the progressive city council. In their telling, North Carolina was an awful place, full of corruption, stifling taxes, oppressive regulation, bloated bureaucracies, a failing school system, and a university that had been taken over by socialists and subversives. Now, they’ve come to save the state by slashing taxes and unleashing the power of the market even where the market doesn’t exist.

The reality is quite different. North Carolina was run by moderate, pro-business Democrats who believed in investing in infrastructure and education to attract and retain businesses. They saw the university system as a tool of economic development as well as a way to provide a well-educated and well-trained populace. They believed that success started early so they invested in early childhood education and worked to improve test scores, increase graduation rates, and reduce dropout rates in our public schools.

Along the way, Democrats got too comfortable. They allowed cronyism to taint their accomplishments; they never adequately addressed the decline of rural North Carolina; they never fixed the out-of-date tax code; and they arrogantly protected their power with the same abuses that the Republicans are using to protect theirs.

Instead of fixing what was broken, the GOP decided to scrap it all because none of the moderate approaches fits their free-market ideology. They want to cut taxes to the bone, reduce oversight and accountability, and let the market take its course. It’s the flip side of Marxism but with the same flaw. With communism, we’re all subject to the inevitable forces of history. The GOP yields to the invisible hand of the market. Both ideologies believe in forces bigger than man to shape the future for the better.

I don’t believe that. I believe that people and policies make a difference. And I believe that the greatest threat to society is not high-taxes or over-regulation but ideological leaders trying to force square pegs into round holes while watering down the power of democracy to do it.

Thomas Mills

Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >