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Publisher's Pen: Congratulations to Robert Edwards and Fayetteville Liberty

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Tuesday, 13 October 2026

Written by Bill Bowman

Wins and losses, attendance figures, and championships often measure success in professional sports. Those accomplishments matter, but the organizations that make the greatest impact are the ones that leave a lasting mark beyond the scoreboard. By that measure, Robert Edwards and the Fayetteville Liberty have already found success.
With their first official season now in the rearview mirror, the Liberty have proven they are more than just a basketball team. They have delivered quality sports entertainment while demonstrating a genuine commitment to Fayetteville and Cumberland County. In just one season, Edwards and his organization have become one of the region's most inspiring community success stories.
As a friend, entrepreneur and dedicated community leader, Edwards brought more than professional basketball to Cumberland County when he launched the Fayetteville Liberty. He brought a vision centered on opportunity, inspiration, and hometown pride. He created something local families could rally around and call their own.
From opening night to the final buzzer, the Liberty showed that their mission extends far beyond the court. Their guiding philosophy, "Building Hope in the Community One Possession at a Time," has been evident every step of the way. Through youth outreach, school partnerships, community engagement programs, and positive role modeling, the organization has demonstrated a sincere commitment to making a difference in the lives of young people and families throughout our area.
Now, the Fayetteville Liberty are preparing for an exciting new chapter. The announcement that the team will move into the Crown Coliseum for the 2027 season marks a significant milestone, not only for the organization but for our entire community. The Crown Complex has long been home to some of the region's biggest events, concerts, competitions and celebrations. Bringing Liberty basketball into the Crown Coliseum elevates the fan experience while reflecting the tremendous growth and momentum the organization has generated in such a short time.
This move speaks volumes about the future of the franchise. It signals confidence, ambition, and long-term sustainability. More importantly, it demonstrates that the Fayetteville Liberty are building something that Fayetteville and Cumberland County can embrace and support for years to come.
For fans, the move means larger crowds, greater energy, improved amenities, and an even more exciting game-day atmosphere. For Edwards and his team, it provides a stage worthy of the hard work, determination and commitment they have shown since day one.
At Up & Coming Weekly, we are proud to serve as the Liberty's official community publication, and we look forward to being part of their continued growth and success. Robert Edwards and his team have done their part. They have invested in our community, supported our youth, and worked tirelessly to build a first-class organization. Now it's our turn.
Fayetteville and Cumberland County have always supported people, businesses and organizations that invest in the community. The Liberty have earned that support through authenticity, consistency and a genuine desire to make a difference. Their commitment to serving others, encouraging young people, and bringing families together reflects the very best of what community is all about.
We congratulate Robert Edwards, the players, coaches, staff, sponsors, and volunteers on a successful first season and wish them continued success as they prepare for their debut at the Crown Coliseum in March 2027.
The future looks bright for Liberty basketball. Up & Coming Weekly will be there cheering every possession, every victory, and every milestone along the way. Tickets and season passes go on sale this week, and we encourage the entire community to get behind Fayetteville's hometown team.
We hope to see you in the stands on opening day as the Fayetteville Liberty begins an exciting new era at the Crown Coliseum.

Thank you for reading Up & Coming Weekly.

(Photo: The Fayetteville Liberty finished their inaugural season and is looking forward to the next, which will take place at the Crown Coliseum. Photo courtesy of Fayetteville Liberty)

Washington Can’t Ease Our Traffic Jams

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Tuesday, 06 October 2026

Written by John Hood

The federal government projects trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. Perhaps that’s the problem: Washington’s fiscal irresponsibility has become so reckless, its costs so gargantuan, that the issue is hard for the average voter to grasp and, thus, prioritize.
So, I will try to make concrete what may seem abstract, and local what may seem far away. Let’s talk about traffic jams in Raleigh, Charlotte, and other North Carolina communities.
As frustrating as traffic jams are, and as wasteful of time and resources, the alternative is worse: little traffic at all. That broad swaths of North Carolina continue to add people, companies, and job opportunities is an affirmation that our state remains an attractive mix of natural and human resources — and that our leaders have, for the most part, governed more wisely than their counterparts in other parts of the country.
Still, policymakers need to upgrade and expand the transportation infrastructure needed to accommodate such growth and lay the foundation for future investment, in-migration, and family formation. For airports, seaports, and rail lines, the mechanisms for financing such capital projects are straightforward. These enterprises, be they public or private, can easily charge their users for their services. These funds, in turn, pay for infrastructure projects or are used to cover principal and interest for the loans or bond issuances required to finance them.
With roads and bridges, the story is more complicated. Users still bear the vast majority of the cost of the infrastructure itself, albeit indirectly through fuel taxes and vehicle registrations rather than direct charges (i.e. tolls). More importantly, most of the value of vehicular transportation can be found not in asphalt, concrete, signage, or safety protection but in the vehicles themselves, nearly all of which are privately owned, operated, and insured.
Over time, however, the rough approximation of a user fee represented by per-gallon fuel taxes and per-vehicle registration fees became less of a meaningful approximation. Vehicles traveled more miles per gallon. Electric and hybrid vehicles also altered the math. North Carolina and other states responded by raising tax rates, hiking registration fees, redirecting tax revenue from the sale of auto parts and services to highway purposes, and reducing the extent to which any highway-related revenues are diverted to non-highway purposes.
Faced with the same mismatch between highway demand and highway-related revenue, federal policymakers made less-defensible choices. Congress has routinely subsidized the federal Highway Trust Fund with general revenues, sometimes paying for nearly a third of annual expenditures that way — even as Washington ran massive annual deficits.
Before 2008, explains the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, highway tax revenue dedicated to the federal trust fund was “sufficient to pay for outlays from the fund.” Since then, Congress has transferred hundreds of billions of dollars from general revenues to the federal highway program, including $118 billion in 2021 alone. According to a recent Congressional Budget Office projection, the federal program will require another $150 billion infusion from outside the system to keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent through the end of the 2031 fiscal year. Beyond that year, the projections are likely to get gloomier, not sunnier.
See where this is going? Whatever you think of using federal income taxes to pay for local road projects, this practice is going to end sooner rather than later. Federal debt now exceeds America’s annual economic output. The Social Security and Medicare “trust” funds will be exhausted in about seven years. Even if the current military operations against Iran end sometime soon, it would be unreasonable to expect a sudden outbreak of stability around the world’s key economic chokepoints (the straits of Hormuz, Bab El-Mandab, Taiwan, and Malacca, for example). Because massive federal deficits will keep interest rates painfully elevated, I believe future presidents and lawmakers will be forced into serious actions. One of them will be to curtail if not end federal subsidies for highways.
Just something else to think about while stuck in traffic. You’re welcome.

Editor’s note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

Dan DeBruler: Life Interrupted

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Tuesday, 06 October 2026

Written by Dan DeBruler

I’ve reached a point in my life that my perspective on what constitutes an interruption has shifted. Like most people reading this, there are things I intend to accomplish by the end of today, the end of the month, or the end of my life. I make plans. I keep lists. I have places to be and things that need to get done.
But the truth is that sometimes we experience detours and delays we initially consider aggravating, which turn out to take on a trip so beautiful we couldn’t have planned if we tried.
That possibility has changed the way I think about interruptions. Most of us naturally define an interruption as something that gets in the way of what we were supposed to be doing. But when I read the Gospels, I’m struck by how often Jesus seems to be interrupted.
Someone calls out from the crowd. A desperate father approaches Him. A woman reaches through the people just to touch His clothes. Children are brought to Him when the disciples apparently believe He has more important things to do. And repeatedly, Jesus stops.
One of my favorite examples happens in Mark 5. Jesus is already on His way to help Jairus, whose daughter is dying. This is urgent. There is a destination, a purpose, and seemingly no time to waste. Then a woman who has suffered for twelve years pushes through a crowd to simply touch His garment. Jesus stops.
From the disciples’ perspective, it probably made little sense. There was a crowd pressing around Him. Jairus was waiting. A child was dying. But Jesus saw a person where everyone else saw a delay. That’s a challenging thought. I wonder how many times I have been so focused on getting somewhere that I nearly missed someone. The phone call that lasts longer than expected. The conversation in the parking lot. The person who walks into the office when the schedule is already full. The grandchild who wants your attention when you are trying to finish something “important.”
Not every interruption is a divine appointment. Some distractions really are distractions. Wisdom still matters. But perhaps we should be slower to assume that anything disrupting our agenda is interfering with our purpose. Sometimes the interruption is the purpose.
Jesus never seemed hurried by people, even when He was moving toward something important. He understood something we easily forget: accomplishing the task and loving the person are not always competing priorities. In fact, sometimes loving the person is the task.
So I’m learning to hold my plans a little more loosely.
I still have things I want to accomplish today, this month, and with whatever years God gives me. But I’m trying to leave some room for the unexpected.
Because occasionally, what looks like a detour may actually be the road God intended for us to travel.

Troy's Perspective: Lessons in "Animal Farm"

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Tuesday, 06 October 2026

Written by Troy Williams

It has been a little more than 80 years since English author George Orwell published his celebrated satirical novel Animal Farm in 1945. When I was in high school more than 50 years ago, Animal Farm was required reading. TIME would later include it among its 100 best English-language novels. Today, through my own informal observations, it seems increasingly difficult to find people under 50 who have read the novel, or, in some cases, even heard of it.
Stay with me. This journey back into literature and history has a point. Animal Farm is written as a beast fable. The animals of Manor Farm overthrow their irresponsible human owner, Mr. Jones, believing they can create a society in which animals will be equal, free, and prosperous. But something happens along the way. The revolutionaries who promised equality gradually became the new ruling class. The novel was a political allegory based largely on the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent development of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. The enduring lesson of Animal Farm is a movement's name and promises do not tell us how it will ultimately govern.
Fast-forward to 2026. The word "Nazi" is frequently thrown around in American political debate, including accusations directed at President Donald Trump and other conservatives. But history deserves greater precision than political name-calling. The Nazi Party's complete name was the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
Again, Orwell's lesson is useful: judge political movements not simply by what they call themselves, but by what they propose to do with power. That brings us back to America. The Democratic Socialists of America's current national program proposes fundamental changes to the American constitutional structure.
Among other things, it calls for abolishing the Senate and Electoral College and replacing the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary selected by and subordinate to Congress. Americans ought to know these proposals exist and examine them for themselves.
That brings me to my generation. Baby Boomers, born between 1946 -1964, now approximately 62 to 80 years old.
Our generation grew up during the Cold War. We remember civil-defense discussions, nuclear fears, the Soviet Union, and Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev led the Soviet Union from 1953 until 1964. Americans heard Soviet leaders proclaim their confidence that communism would ultimately surpass capitalism. Meanwhile, Soviet advances in nuclear weapons, missiles, and space technology made the ideological competition between the United States and the Soviet Union frighteningly real.
My generation received a heavy dose of anti-communist education and rhetoric. It would probably have been difficult for many Americans living through that period to imagine that, within their lifetimes, some of their children and grandchildren would openly embrace socialism and that some Americans would openly identify with communist ideas. But history moves in unexpected directions. The socialist/communist thought process has infiltrated politics from Capitol Hill to City Hall.
Perhaps young Americans who want to become revolutionaries fully understand the political systems they advocate. Perhaps some do not. Either way, there is an inexpensive place to begin the conversation. Go to the library. Find George Orwell. And read Animal Farm. The animals of Manor Farm still have something to teach us.