Two "P's" in a pod

Political observers have rolled their eyes at Phil Berger for supplicating himself so avidly to Donald Trump. Like so many Republicans before him, Berger shamelessly flattered our disturbed dictator and postured as an eager lieutenant in the MAGA army, desperate to coax an endorsement out of the Big Boss to save the political career of the Little Boss in Raleigh. It worked. Berger will continue to dominate North Carolina politics.

I was skeptical that Sam Page would, in the final analysis, be able to defeat Berger. Sometimes people use polls to vent their frustration with politicians rather than to express an actual intent to vote against them. I would imagine that was what was happening in the polls showing Page with enormous leads. Berger is a fixture in North Carolina politics with no real rivals for control of the state, and his political operation is drenched in money. I think the frustration and anger at Berger’s power-lust are real forces in Rockingham County. But I thought, at least tentatively, that Berger would survive the challenge.

But I will say this. Phil Berger’s campaign to win Donald Trump’s endorsement through shameless flattery should not have come as a surprise to anyone. Berger likes to amble around the capitol with senatorial dignity, portraying himself as something of a statesman. He is a serious policymaker. But he has also shown a willingness to ruthlessly grasp for power and deliver punitive blows to any person or institution who resists his will. He spent much of the 2010s passing punitive legislation to restrict the power of liberal cities (including ripping up Raleigh’s lease for the future Dix Park); he’s an unrepentant gerrymandering fiend; he has used bigoted demagoguery against a long list of minority groups to keep his conservative base motivated and loyal. He will do a lot to maintain power.

Including make a fool of himself.

From one “P” to another, let’s consider Peter Hans’s latest offer of tribute to his master (the other “P,” as it so happens) on Jones Street. Hans, the figurehead translating Phil Berger’s agenda into policy in Chapel Hill, has announced that henceforth professors will be required to post course syllabi online. This is cheap red meat for the MAGA people. I would imagine most of the complaints against course syllabi will come from conservative think tankers paid to made liberals look foolish. And certainly the noncollege white men who vote for Republicans in North Carolina will take a measure of satisfaction in seeing the intellectual elite humiliated.

As I said, it’s cheap red meat. But it’s more than that: This policy represents an attack on civil liberties derived from centuries of reactionary politics in North Carolina. Civil liberties have always been weak in the South. The Confederacy was essentially a police state, and civil-rights protests were met with state violence. The same has been true with regard to higher education. In the 1850s, politicians drove a UNC professor out of the state for voicing his opposition to slavery. When civil liberties in the South conflict with white supremacy, we know which priority wins out.

And if UNC professors are required to post syllabi online for the perusal of aggrieved right-wing activists, they will be subjected to threats and potentially even violence. Doubt it? Look at the number of acts of political violence MAGA Republicanism has inspired over the last ten years. The intent is to make professors nervous, over the long term to suppress the teaching of left-leaning ideas at UNC. It’s an attack on academic freedom and freedom of speech.

And it’s a conspicuous “Go to Hell” message to North Carolina voters. North Carolinians decidedly voted against the “Moms for Liberty” approach to education policy when Mo Green defeated conspiracy theorist Michele Morrow last fall. Morrow had spent much of her political life on these kinds of illiberal crusades against public educators. She undoubtedly would have come after course syllabi hard. The state rejected this extremism. But Peter Hans is enacting it, with no avenue of recourse clearly available, at the campuses of the University of North Carolina system. There are times when elections seem almost meaningless in North Carolina. Phil Berger has seen to it.