Cynical critic of the John Locke Foundation though I long have been, even I found a recent Carolina Journal piece to be shocking. “What’s behind the new push to end teen marriage?” it mused. I didn’t want to read the piece, presuming, without justification, that its argument was less depraved than the headline made it appear. I finally did read it and was disgusted. The blunt fact is that our state’s most influential think tank is in a moral death spiral.
Carolina Journal’s evident apologia for child marriage, an obscene practice most often associated with benighted tribal societies, should astonish even the most jaded critic. Child marriage represents institutionalized child molestation. In North Carolina, a grown man can initiate–and consummate–a marriage with vulnerable underage girls who lack the neurological capacity to reciprocate these propositions with real consent. It’s sick and twisted, and the fact that Carolina Journal would euphemize this abuse with the cheery moniker “teen marriage” is despicable.
But their nods towards depravity have become routine. Day by day, it seems, the John Locke Foundation excretes pitiful excuses for the GOP legislative agenda. Where once the Foundation expounded libertarianism, they now supply a steady stream of justifications for any culturally conservative nonsense Republicans wish to impose upon marginalized groups. They are completely shameless about it, and the “Teen Marriage” piece exemplifies this cynicism in a particularly grotesque form.
The John Lockers still produce a bit of their old fodder, though. This is to say, highbrow defenses of Art Pope’s personal financial self-interest. But in the pixel-built pages of Carolina Journal, even fiscal subservience comes in a specious flavor. The intellectual standards of this think tank, a modest little idea factory named after a philosophical giant, have turned to dust.
In 1992, Art Pope lost a race for Lieutenant Governor because his pet project had generated reams of fringy kookiness on social-issue debates. He was an awkward and lackluster politician, but as the godfather of a policy empire he at least had intellectual ambitions. At the John Locke Foundation’s unremarkable North Hills HQ, this crackling of ideas has been snuffed out by the rank force of partisan conformity. Let’s see them explain their cynicism to one of North Carolina’s thousands of child brides.
Alexander Jones is an original contributor to PoliticsNC.
I received their propaganda for 20 years after attending a Christopher Hitchens lecture they sponsored. The other attendees were polite until I revealed my lefty politics. I was able to draw Hitch out with a question about enlightenment vs fundamentalist values to their shock and begrudging respect. Knowing of Polk and his ilk, I read it to keep up with their “thought”. But enough was enough, including the profaning of Locke’s name. Keep calling them out!