Come visit if you are interested. 

"Reidsville ? Reidsville High School was recognized being recognized for their football team on a state level.

The RHS football team and coach Jim Teague was named "FootballCapital of NC" by the General Assembly in Raleigh, NC. The vote came in at an unanimous 118-0.

Reidsville High School has won more State Championships than any other high school in the state. They hold a total of 16 State Championships.

WFMY News 2"

Somebody needs to get Chelsi's back. 

Helpful. 

Video.

This book is a must read for any politician, journalist, activist, observer or just plain interested party. Christensen deserves a medal for making the subject matter approachable to the layman. As an historical work, the book ranks among the most active and engaging stories in recent memory.

Perhaps a testament to the editors Christensen has had in his career, the prose is engaging and full of energy. There is hardly a weak spot in the entire book. Whether the reader is on vacation with hours on end or a casual nighttime bookworm reading a few pages a night, "The Paradox of Tarheel Politics" is sure to capture and hold their attention.

In this essay, I hope to capture the spirit of Christensen's work while at the same time examining and providing my own interpretations viewed from my personal foundation of conservative, post Reagan-era Republicanism.

I suppose Christensen's main thesis could be summed up, as has been stated in professional reviews, by saying that North Carolina political history in the 20th Century was a dichotomy of one party domination, based on the twin pillars of violence, bigotry and malice toward the aspirations of the state's black citizens and a dedication to otherwise "progressive" policies vis a vis business and education.

As one who grew up in post-integration North Carolina, I find it disgraceful that the state's Democratic Party owes its 110 years of unfettered dominance of the state's political machine to an 1898 white supremacy campaign executed on horseback with torchlight and gunfire.

The next 60-plus years of state history is devoid of mention of Republican leadership. Each and every election is examined in light of the Democratic Primary. As one who was born into a Piedmont Republican family, I find it hard to imagine the mindset I encounter here in Rockingham County, where many of my conservative, yet still Democratic, friends tell me "I registered as a Democratic in 1960-whatever, because my daddy told me that if I wanted to vote in the primary I had to be a Democrat."

This evidence of one-party domination is anathema to the spirit of the founding fathers, who wanted to prevent one party domination be creating a system that forced working coalitions in order to abnegate the power of demagoguery. Yet in North Carolina, likely as well in many other southern states, that is exactly what the post 1877, Jim Crow-era Democratic Party gave us. Let us not also forget that the Democratic Party pre-1860 dragged this region straight into the Civil War because of its obstinate dedication to an economy based on slave labor.

But I digress.

From 1900-1960, most Democratic primaries boiled down to a "conservative" (meaning segregationist) candidate against a liberal candidate who may have wanted to give more state money to black schools, or allowed for more lenient literacy tests for blacks to register to vote. The 1898 campaign was followed quickly by a disenfranchisement vote that in essence stripped all blacks in North Carolina of the right to vote.

This period of Democratic control is highlighted by several interesting characters, who drive the story along in conjunction with the building tension the reader knows is coming to a head in the 1960s and the civil rights movement.

Among them briefly are Governor's Aycock and Gardner, who to their credit did champion an increased state funding for black schoolchildren. Aycock was elected on the heels of the 1898 campaign and began the century long tradition of Democratic governors using education as their springboard to populism, despite being controlled by machine politics in the pocket of the state's business interest.

Gardner later, in 1927 wrestled the Democratic machine away from eastern dominance, and established the Shelby Dynasty, which led the state through the Great Depression. Gardner and company's pro-business, anti-union policies, helped smooth the leftist conflicts of that era and laid the groundwork for the state's economic rise to become the Dixie Dynamo of the 1960s.

This included Gov. Ehringhaus's push for rural electrification.

It is also during this time that Sen. Josiah Bailey served in the US Senate. Bailey, to me, is one of the foremost characters of this time. Inspired by his scholarly gaze as pictured in the book, I have begun reading a political biography of Bailey and hope to have more to say at a later date. He was most known for opposing many of FDR's mid-to-late New Deal program's and as author of the Conservative Manifesto.

During the late 1930s and 1940s, the state seemed to chug along with the onset of World War II and the rise of the Greatest Generation of Americans dedicated to self-sacrifice and heroism in order to win the war and overcome the economic challenges of the time.

The end of WWII and the election of 1948 marks the rise of W. Kerr Scott, the coming Senate election of 1950 and the rise of the two men who would dominate the second half of the century in North Carolina politics: Terry Sanford and Jesse Helms.

Throughout "The Paradox of Tarheel Politics", author Rob Christensen brings these characters to life as if they were still dominating today's headlines.

I hope to pick up this review and cross-over into a more personal narrative in the coming days.

I've thought his leadership in the general assembly has been stellar. Republicans across the state would do well to look to Berger as one of the cornerstones to build a conservative legislature upon.

Take this quote for example, on the Democrat's budget, created in secret, closed door meetings, and dumped on the legislature with just hours to digest. The plan calls for more than $800 million in new debt.

AP:

*"Good gracious," said Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican. "I am just concerned about the level of debt -- just about a billion dollars in debt."

Berger said that much borrowing should require voters' approval, instead of letting lawmakers make the call when they vote on the $21.3 billion spending plan next week.

"If we are going to tie down the taxpayers' future, in terms of paying down the debt, we really ought to let them have a say," he said."*

That's how I feel and that's putting it mildly. Very mildly.

AP:

"The report said Carson was shot five times, including once in the right cheek by a "full metal jacketed bullet" and in the right shoulder by a similar bullet that penetrated her right lung and traveled into her small intestine. She was also shot in the right upper arm and in the right buttock.

But the most vicious wound came from a shotgun blast that struck her right hand before hitting the right side of her head and brain, where the medical examiner recovered "numerous birdshot pellets and a plastic shot cup."

"These wounds most likely represent a single shot with the hand acting as an intermediate target," the report said."

That's not just some salacious report of how a vibrant young woman died. It means a man was standing over her armed with a firearm, pulling the trigger. Multiple times. Again and again. As she lay on the ground.

Animals.