Wisconsin: What’s the Right Analogy?
Suddenly, all of the nation’s eyes are on Madison, Wisconsin, as a national battle long in the brewing was set off by the sudden reversal of political fortune last fall in the historical home of the “progressive” movement, when Republicans took over the statehouse and governorship. Public employee unions have been the last redoubt of the union movement, with unionized workers less than ten percent of the private work force. They have served to create an unvirtuous cycle of political graft and contribution that has long played a key element in Democrat electoral strategy, one that was crucial to Barack Obama’s winning the White House in 2008 and will be so again next year. And if they lose in this previously most “progressive” of states, others will surely follow, not just in the upper Midwest, but potentially across the country even to leftist bastions like California, whose shores managed to avoid November’s political tsunami.
So the Democrats, including the president, have correctly assessed that if their public-employee union allies lose this battle and are no longer able to demand ever-increasing wages and benefits, and funnel much of them from their (many of them unwilling) members to Democrat campaign coffers, their political fortunes will fall even further from their well-deserved “shellacking” in November. Like the coming loss of seats due to redistricting, this will be an even greater consequence of this election than mere loss of seats, due to its long-term strategic implications. And so concerned are they that they’ve even been willing to let slip the mask of “moderate” and “centrist” from the president to help their minions.
Several historical analogies to this event have been made over the past few days. Some have called it “Greece with snow,” as those receiving state largess have been rioting and protesting over even a slight diminution of it. Others have compared it to recent events in Egypt, which now threaten or promise (depending on one’s point of view of the desirability of the projected outcome) to cause the rest of the region to fall like so many dominoes, releasing a long-pent-up potential energy. It has even been analogized to the Spanish Civil War, a decidedly uncomfortable fit, given that it was a battle that both sides should have lost, from the standpoint of those who favor individual liberty and not various flavors of collectivism.
Pajamas’ own Richard Fernandez, in also noting the Egypt analogy, has pointed out similarities with the Battle of Jutland, an “accidental” naval battle in the First World War, accidental in the sense that its location was contingent on an external event and that, while such a clash was inevitable at some point, the location had not been planned by either side. The problem with this analogy is that, while it was the greatest naval engagement of the war, with huge casualties on both sides, it wasn’t really strategically decisive, and ultimately had little influence on the outcome (unless perhaps one wants to counterfactual that the Lusitania somehow wouldn’t have been sunk in its absence, and America not been drawn in to the war).
From that standpoint, I think that a more interesting analogy is Gettysburg.
The best analogy EVER! We are fighting a Civil War. Started by a Black President no less, who wants us all on a Marxist Plantation as SLAVES. We have come full circle. The irony is rich.
placed on cotton while increasing production in other countries was unbridled Tariffs from just two states financed 80% of the federal budget without any affirmative action slave subsidy. Lincoln preferred deportation of slaves and extermination of native Americans.
Conversely, the rebellious parallel of activity in Wisconsin to protect or delete a source of tithe to their union benefactors in government at the expense of the state and its citizens. The desperation becoming evident today is anchored in the union support of a political party that has heard its death knell before it becomes widely respected among its incumbent big mouths. When citizens of other states join the resistance to to federal takeover will they also be deemed rebels? Where will all the state congressmen hide to avoid exposure of their loyalty by vote count? Since when is 70% Arab considered black except to uninformed voters willing to sell their vote ?
The slave-master Unions who keep public sector tax-payers in a metaphorical choke-hold by a bunch of greedy union thugs who line the pockets of politicians to bend the law on how to divvy up other people’s hard-earned money so that the dice is always in their favor need to go the way of the dodo bird.
Wisconsin: What’s the Right Analogy?
Perhaps a caption more than an analogy but I couldn’t resist:
Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)
I especially like the bubbles discharged by the SCUBA gear the leeches were wearing!
Dem be some smaat leeches!
Yeah, I gotta go with leeches…
Delia-typo alert: *
publicprivate sector tax-payers*Gah!
Cybergeezer, your posts are so much fun and you manage to get a chuckle out of me every dang time! Loaded Leeches! EEK! hehe
Why does there have to be analogies in this regard at all let alone an inapt flood of them? It casts a modern event in an uncertain and perhaps inaccurate light when we should be talking about the right and wrong of it as is and not through military meeting engagements, watersheds and sure as hell not Faulkner.
If an apt analogy to the Rubicon cannot be mustered from an event more than a century and a half gone, what chance do we have do so in Wis. now today?
It takes away words that describe the actual event and talk of dam busters, Jutland and Gettysberg invites pedants to comment on old military history that is neither here nor there and more discussion of the actual event in question is pushed to the side.
This is about unions, which were at one time and still have the potential for being, a wonderful equalizing force for workers rights. The problem is that such organizations have become bloated lobbying bureaucracies dedicated, in the case of working within government, to a type of corrupt socialism that sucks tax dollars from the middle class while actually benefiting only the workers involved.
The gov’t is considered some kind of winning lottery ticket when it comes to pensions and benefits and so you have teachers who don’t even work full time hours making almost 50 grand a year on average before benefits who are strangling state budgets with a pyramid-like benefits and especially pension scheme that states cannot sustain. Those pensions should be ripped to shreds, not because they are right or wrong, but because they are not financially feasible. They are abused to the hilt and retirees are making small fortunes across this country on lucrative retirements from government while continuing to work.
The Teamsters are bringing the full force of their corrupt union money to bear on this issue and the next stop will be Indiana. One could only wonder how much more money could be spent on Teamsters themselves if the absurd amounts of money to lobby and back elections were not spent.
If I may, the reason “there have to be anologies”, is that one the essential elements of conservatism is that humans run true to form, as do their patterns of behavior, and much wisdom can be gained from acknowledging that.
If I may hurt my arm patting myself on the back, I was taken aback to see the word “Gettysburg”, because I have been saying exactly that for three days. Simberg discusses the political ramifications and more, but for me, the moment I heard that the DNC and OFA were pouring resources into the fight, I was reminded of that little skirmish over shoes, when a small cavalry brigade forced a few confederate advance forces to ask for some help from friends, and that cavalry brigade knew that was happening, so they called in their friends, and both sets of friends saw the writing on the wall and called in the full monty, and a couple potshots over shoes in a little village became two vast armies grappling in a titanic volcano of violence. Most people saw it comeing, but no one knew it would be Gettysburg, no one knew it would be Wisconsin, and here we are.
I flash back to, of all things, the Harvard-Gates/Crowley police incident, which history will show was Obama’s poll apogee, and the moment people started saying “Wait a minute, this isn’t what I voted for”. He’s been downhill from there. The lesson – History will crop up in the weirdest, most out-of-the-way places that you never expected and can never plan for, and then, like a sudden wormhole, will suck the national and global energy into it voraciously. All any President, and the rest of us, can do is ride the ripples as best we can. (And Obama don’t surf very well, I would venture to say.)
That’s what makes the grand tapestry so fascinating.
The analogy to a meeting engagement where outsized forces are drawn into a accidental battle is true as far as it goes but in this case the Reps. had chosen their ground ahead of time and the Reps. in Indiana for the battle coming there this week have chosen their own ground even more carefully.
Usually an analogy comes with a lesson that suggests a means to problem solve and I don’t see it here. Part of the lesson at Gettysburg has to do with articulating ones chess pieces effectively at the right time but the Reps. simply have all the cards on this one. Both sides can bus in all the troops they want and it won’t make a difference.
Gettysburg does not suggest an outcome on this one since that outcome is predetermined by law and not chance or fate. Gettysburg is a great example of weird things happening at weird times, of nobodies saving the day and stupid maneuvers actually working out well. Gettysburg was a battle of attrition and Wisc. is a set piece that is a done deal.
The great lesson of Gettysburg is really one of how subordinates can play a positive or negative role in a field of surprises, chance and uncertainty.
In Wisc. one can protest all one wants but it is the General and not bit players taking a starring role who’ll win this one as holding signs is not going to make money appear out of thin air and a relieving force will not truly arrive til the next elections at the earliest.
I fully agree with James May’s assessment on the propriety of comparing Gettysburg with the situation in Wisconsin today. Historical analogies are always dicey, as I argued here in another instance: http://clarespark.com/2011/01/25/american-slavery-vs-nazi-genocide/. I am so disturbed by this common practice among academics and lay people alike, that I am going to blog about it for President’s Day. Meanwhile a reminder that such as Ralph Bunche were complaining about corrupt union leadership throughout the 1930s, and that was topped off by On The Waterfront. For their trouble, academe neglects Bunche, and Hollywood trashes Schulberg and Kazan as traitors. What screenwriters, reporters, or bloggers are equaling James May’s analysis today?
I finished my blog criticizing Rand Simberg’s analogy and agreeing with James May. The blog is here and solicits your comments: http://clarespark.com/2011/02/20/are-we-still-fighting-the-civil-war/.
And lo and behold the DEMS have left the state of Indiana. Can’t we just fire them?
Thanks for the interesting perspective. I hope you’re right: just as Gettysburg was the high-water mark for the Confederacy, will this be the high-water mark for the Obammunists? (As a Southerner it aches me to make that analogy since I believe the South was constitutionally justified to secede [in fact, I'm from SC and I do believe that we are a top runner for "State Most Likely to Secede" again this year].) But, there is a pattern:
1776: Colonies Declare Independence from Motherland
1861: States Declare War on Federal Government
2011: Federal Government Declares War on States
Actually, the Federal Government declared war on the states in 1861….they won that war and have been lording over since. This is merely the continuance of that struggle. The South finally got itself together and some of the MidWestern States finally woke up to the fact that they were chumps 150th years ago.
As H.L. Mencken famously said early in the 20th Century…
“The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects … what they thus lost they have never got back. – H.L. Mencken”
My wife is a teacher — a college professor at a community college here in Ohio — and faces a situation seemingly similar (at first blush, anyway) to the one that confronts educators in Wisconsin. That is, GOP Governor Kasich and a Republican-controlled state legislature are seeking to substantially trim the role of collective bargaining (unions) in contract negotiations for all public employees.
In the case of higher-education teachers such as my wife, however, the term “public employee” is a loose one. Because, while Ohio DOES provide funding to many state colleges and universities, it supplies far less than half of their annual costs of operation. (The reverse is true for K-12 public schools, whose budgets are wholly dependent upon government allocations of one kind or another — most of it coming from state taxpayers.)
That is a crucial distinction. One that, I believe, makes Ohio Republicans’ attempt to treat college educators as “state employees” a bogus one. But that is not to say that I am completely at odds with Kashich. Because Ohio, like Wisconsin and other states, faces a difficult financial future.
Moreover: Ohio college educators such as my wife already contribute over 10% (11%, I think) of their gross salaries to their own retirement plans. And they also pay a substantial percentage of their health-care costs. Primary- and secondary-school teachers here in Ohio have historically been exempted from either of those financial obligations. So they are long overdue for an introduction to the “real world,” where the norm is that workers (partially) fund their own retirements and defray the cost of employer-provided health care benefits.
I agree with those who assert that government employees have, by and large, gotten very fat feeding at the public trough — and that they’ve bullied elected officials for far too long. Wisconsin’s Governor Walker might have fired the the equivalent of the first shot at Ft. Sumpter (or perhaps it was Gov. Chistie in New Jersey), but one thing is clear: a civil war, of sorts, has indeed begun. One that America’s taxpayers cannot afford to lose.
Mike,
You are right up to a point. But state universities in Ohio receive sufficient public subsidies that no private university can compete with them on price. Commuter students, for that matter, often have few choices. Public sector unionism is simply incompatible with the public interest in these circumstances.
The 10% we public employees pay in Ohio replaces social security so the net cost is about 3.8%. The issue here is that the retirement benefits promised to Ohio public employees far, far exceed what this 10% together with the employer contribution can fund. The taxpayers of Ohio will be left holding the bag for the shortfall.
But you are right that the K12 teacher unions are a much bigger problem because you have true monopolies and the negotiations are conducted between unions and public officials that the unions control.
I spent years as a fundraiser for private higher-education institutions, and I can attest that advantages they enjoy in that regard (philanthropy) adequately make up for taxpayer subsidies to their public competitors (over whom they also, typically, enjoy a “prestige” advantage). Burgeoning — often record — enrollments at private institutions over the past couple of decades bear that fact out.
Further, I’ve been told that the State Teacher’s Retirement Fund (in Ohio) will be asking educators at public colleges and universities to up their personal contributions to as much as 13% of their gross salaries in the near future — making their burden nearly double what participants in Social Security bear: 7.5%. (That 5.5% differential is hardly inconsequential. Ask participants in Social Security to increase their contributions by that amount, and the point will be swiftly driven home.)
Finally, I don’t believe that the taxpayers of Ohio will be “left holding the bag” for any STRF benefits shortfalls. STRF periodically supplies its members with estimates of retirement payment schedules, and those estimates rise and fall with the relative health of the fund, market conditions, projected numbers of retirees drawing benefits, life expectancies, etc.
If the taxpayers of Ohio were obligated to simply make up the difference for any fund shortfalls, the projected retirement payments would never go down. But they do.
In fact, STRF has lately begun refraining from even estimating the expected payouts, so uncertain is the future. If taxpayers were obligated to insulate retired professors at Ohio’s public colleges and universities from risk associated with discrepancies between promised benefits and the ability of the fund to pay, such would not be the case.
But it is. So I stand by my original assertions.
A better analogy might be The Battle of the Bulge. In mid-December, 1944, Hitler launched a surprise attack at US troops occupying a quiet geographic backwater of the Western front. Hitler was desperate, pressed on all sides, and had been thrown back to the Rhine after his disastrous D-Day campaign.
In secret, masses of German troops, led by elite formations, assembled quietly in the woods and hills opposite the Americans. When the time was right, they launched their desperate attck, seeking to divide the Western Allies in two and take the vital port of Antwerp.
The Left suffered defeats similar in scope in November. But prior to that a battle had taken place in California, and here is our prototype.
During the summer of 2007, anticipating a confrontation over the pay and benefits of California government employees, union, SEIU prominent among them, began hiring organizers to enable vast amounts of protestors to descend on Sacramento to fight Governor Schwarzenegger’s budget cuts. The organizers where given regions of the state, and quietly networked in them to create the ‘popular front’ that looks so well in the video one sees on the news. Everyone was bussed in like the DC rallies, a similar operation. It is the levie en masse.
Spread among the rank-and-file were professional labor and political organziers, on salary. they provide the direction on the ground.
The crunch came in 2008 Labor was successful in amassing their numbers in the state capital, and Ahnuld folded like a cardboard prop.
Hopefully, states like Wisconsin and Ohio will turn out differently. But get ready, the labor left is well organized, well funded, and willing to go to the bitter end to win.
Back in 1944, by Decenber 31, the Allies had resisted the German onslaught, which was literally running out of gas, its objectives not in sight, the troops over-extended and exhausted. The Allies had maintained their composure, and following the attitude of leaders like Patton, their counter-attack had turned the battle into a devastating German defeat.
Brains and guts won the day.
The first thing that comes to mind are the socialist street marches in Europe in the late 1920s and early 1930s. We know how that came out. The issue is whether the teachers union represents the Communists who were defeated by the more radical socialists who may be considered the SEIU of today.
The interesting twist is there will be no Reichstag fire this time around since the Left already has seized the White House.
The interesting twist is there will be no Reichstag fire this time around since the Left already has seized the White House.
Maybe I’m not following your analogy but Hitler was already in effective control of the Reichstag when the famous fire took place. The fire was apparently lit by a Dutch Communist, although there have long been assertions that he was either put up to it or at least made a fall guy by the Nazis. Hitler used the fire as an excuse to abolish the other parties and lock up the opposition parliamentarians.
Nope, I don’t agree. I see this as Greece, pure and simple. This is what happens when Obama’s treasured European-style socialism hits not only reality, but the US Constitution as well. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that we have to negotiate or bargain with labor unions, nowhere in the Constitution does it say that we can be blackmailed into any agreements by labor unions, and nowhere in the Constitution does it say that we even have to HAVE labor unions. Labor unions have the right to protest, but they do NOT have the right to blackmail people into doing whatever they want. But over the past century, labor unions have become the fourth branch of government, after the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches. For years they ran state governments and got presidents elected and that, my friends, is tyranny pure and simple. Who are they to tell us what public employees are to make? Who are they to close down an entire state government simply because they don’t like a labor deal? And who are they to try and blackmail a sitting governor and state legislature simply because they’re not getting the payoffs and union dues they’ve become accostomed to?
Nope, this is Greece, where people who got used to generations of social-welfare benefits have finally come to the horrific conclusion that they’ve run out of spending other people’s money. And for these union types to demand, yes demand, that the state raise YOUR taxes even higher simply because they want to get their medical benefits and pension funds for FREE, is selfish to say the least and disgusting to say the most. Think about it. They don’t care if YOUR real estate taxes go up because of them. You may be out of a job, you may be looking for work, you may have a family to support with cash running out. THEY DO NOT CARE. They want what THEY want and you can pound salt as long as it means supporting them and their lifestyles.
My friends, this is how civil wars are started. And our man/boy president is doing NOTHING to stop it. On the contrary, he’s encouraging it. Obama has fanned the flames of class warfare ever since he became president, talking about those “evil” rich people and the “redistribution” of wealth. Well, bud, this is what you get for taking sides in class warfare. You’re about to get the war. If the Republicans back down, or, worse, are forced to back down by either the unions or the Federal Government, you will see a backlash against the unions that will make what happened in the election of 2010 look like a joke. Obama and his minions don’t really understand how angry people are out there and he really, really, doesn’t understand the holy hell he’s about to unleash if the Wisconsin government falls because of this.
And Obama had better pray, pray, for the continued good health of the governor and ALL of the Republican state officials in Wisconsin. Because, if any of them get hurt, you will see something that was mentioned in the above article. Another Civil War.
Labour unions, as we know them today, didn’t exist when the US Constitution was written so it is not surprising that they were recognized in the Constitution.
They came along later and laws were enacted regarding unions when they became a major issue, just as the FCC wasn’t created until media like radio and television came along and appeared to need supervision.
Unfortunately, no government can anticipate every social or technological development that comes along so laws and procedures for handling those have to be concocted without the direct guidance of the Founding Fathers….
True, Henry, that labor unions did not exist when the Founding Fathers created the Constitution. But there were, and still are, Amendments to the Constitution. There are NO Amendments that require any city, state, or the Federal Government to negotiate, let alone be blackmailed by, any union. Labor unions in this country have gone from representing the legitimate grievances of workers (such as coal miners) to being big, bloated, corrupt, and, at times, criminal organizations (such as under Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters in the 1960s). Now we have arrived to a point where nothing can get done in most major industries without the consent of a union and that has destroyed much of our industrial base in this country (such as with the UAW and General Motors). No, the time has come to stand up to these criminals. Remember, the government does NOT work for the Unions and neither do the citizens of a state. Time they started running unions more like private companies, rather than organized crime. Protesting bad working conditions or unfair pay is one thing. Stealing billions of dollars from a state simply because union members don’t feel like contributing to either their pensions or their health benefits is another.
Not only don’t the union leaders care about the taxpayers they don’t even care about their members to the extent they would let them lose their jobs instead of giving in to a simple reduction of benefits to save those same jobs.
Bravo. perfect analogy in tactics. However, there was really no winner in Gettysburg, only what could have been. I sincerely doubt that we will have such a stand-off here. Someone has to win, and thus lose. Since the libs only know how to change the story when they lose to suit their purposes, or as in the case with the president, to ignore the outcome, recast it, and move on to another capitol, I suspect a win for Gov. Walker and taxpayers will move to the courts. And we know what a crapshoot the courts are! Maybe in that sense it COULD be more like Gettysburg than I realize!!
Private-sector unions need to stand with the Wisconsin Governor. Government workers should never have been given collective bargaining rights. The majority of Americans are opposed to public unions. If the private-sector unions do not break from their support, they just may go down with them.
Check out more at:
http://samschaos.blogspot.com/2011/02/hey-gov-walker-this-union-man-is-right.html
&
http://samschaos.blogspot.com/2011/02/fdr-afl-cio-opposed-public-unions.html
Actually, the sinking of the Lusitania would have occurred irrespective of the Battle of Jutland, since it was sunk a year before the battle. I respectfully disagree that the battle had little strategic significance; it kept the German fleet in harbor for the balance of the war.
But this is an historical argument. British gunnery may not have been fully on target in 1916 but your political point regarding 2011 is spot on.
If a state legislative hearing had to be canceled due to a Tea Party demonstration, absolutely everything we’d be hearing all day today would be the incipient fascism of the Tea Partiers, the threat to the democratic process, the dark night about to descend on America, and so forth.
Let’s hope the unions and Dems are stacking their cordite in the corridors.
A great analysis. Thank you for putting it in such clear context.
This current Union / DemocRAT Axis-Of-Evil headed by their very own Dr Evil (Obamesiah) is nothing more than the same decades long Leftist criminal enterprise it has always been. Leftists try mightily to bypass the will of the public at large and gain control of the levers of government power through the use of legislative favors to unions which in turn funnel much of that same money back to the criminal politicians. When that effect is added to the Leftists control of the media, you have a two-pronged pincer movement aimed at permanently excluding the public at large from having any control over government.
Leftists do not seek to participate in the public debate, they seek to have absolute control over the public debate and will tolerate no dissention. The average citizen has to be taught that union animals are just more equal than others in the general public. Now, just pay your confiscatory taxes and let the “enlightend” criminals have their way, otherwise their partners in crime (the MSM, “making a difference!”) will shill for their Leftists betters and relentlessly attack the general public as ignorant selfish rabble.
Had enough?
I’d remind Rand Simberg that the sinking of the British ship Lusitania (carryng munitions from the US to England) on May 7, 1915, did NOT cause the US to enter WW I on April 2, 1917 (almost 2 full years later).
The Zimmermann telegram (the German ambassador to Mexico) was the proximate cause of American entry into that war. On January 19, 1917, Germany promised an alliance with Mexico and the taking of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona as the prize for Mexico. When the contents of that telegram were deciphered and given to Wilson, he allegedly “anguished” over the problem and eventually (on April 2, 1917) asked Congress to declare war on Germany (but not Mexico).
Germany had stopped unrestricted submarine warfare after sinking the Lusitania, but resumed it on February 1, 1917, in a futile attempt to force England to come to peace terms.
The so-called “Civil War” was not a rebellion. It was a confederation of southern states that decided to dissolve the union by seceding from the voluntary coalition of 1776 that formed the USA.
I’d also note that the slavery that existed in the southern states was dying out, not only from a moral standpoint, but with the advent of the steam engine and railroads which made slavery uneconomic. A tractor, for example, replaced many slaves.
It is, of course, more satisfying to equate the War of Secession with the morally superior stance of anti-slavery, but to ignore the economic problems that the north caused the southern states is to simply also ignore history.
Phhuulease,
Every single powerful figure of the secessionist movement made it clear, in unmistakable clarity through decades of argument before the Civil War, what their ultimate goal was:
A Southern Empire, with freshly acquired, conquered lands in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, propelled by a by a huge EXPANSION OF SLAVERY, becoming an economic world power to rival Europe and “yankee” America.
Do yourself a favor…
Find some newspapers dated between 1830 and 1860…read them.
Read some contemporary political memoirs published in that time frame. Read the diaries of southern political, social and economic “leaders” of the era.
Look up some of the political debate of the time AS it was debated, AS it was advocated, AS it was promoted, and see what you find.
Nowhere will you see any “admission” that the institution was wrong, or that it should decline…on the contrary, most everywhere you will see it defended as a proper and desirable practice, and as the backbone of an economic way of life. A way of life that should “naturally” become its own Independent, expansive Nation/empire…
Many a poor and brave southern AMERICAN boy unfortunately bought into the propaganda of the Wealthy Southern Aristocracy, and were used as fodder for their greed.
I wont dismiss their physical courage on the Battlefield, but they were badly misled by a system that cared only about itself. They were sold a lie, and died in vain, because their leadership was corrupt and evil to the core…Out and out TRAITORS, willing to destroy the greatest nation on earth for their own personal profit.
But for the magnanimous nature of Americans, every southern officer, senior NCO, and politician above the rank of DOG CATCHER would have been sentenced to DEATH after the Assassination of the President.
Like the Teachers Union in Wisconsin, the Southern interests of the time saw an election they disagreed with as a threat to their gravy train.
So, rather than act like credible, honorable adults, the decided to blow up the machine, rather than work within its mechanics to solve the issue.
Are you describing rank and file public union workers and their leadership (including a certain well-known commune-it-ty organizer)? Traitors? Shame on you.
Finally, someone who knows the real reasons for the “Civil War”. States rights were a factor ,but largely it was an economic war; much like now.
I’d also note that the slavery that existed in the southern states was dying out, not only from a moral standpoint, but with the advent of the steam engine and railroads which made slavery uneconomic. A tractor, for example, replaced many slaves.
If slavery was dying out, then why was the South so adamant about expanding slavery into the western territories? Slavery can take many forms. Slaves can work in foundries and factories as well as in cotton fields. Had slavery been permitted to expand into the western territories, there was a good possibility that the economic exploitation of slaves would have taken on different forms in the West than it had in the South.
As late as 1900, tractors were a rarity in the South. From Economic History of Tractors in the United States :
Given the high rainfall and wet soils of the South, by 1900, there would have been very few tractors in the South.
Much of the use of slaves was for producing cotton. Mechanical cotton pickers were not widely used in the South until after World War 2.
As late as 1952, less than 5% of the cotton crops in South Carolina and Arkansas were picked by machine. (My mother had first cousins who had picked cotton by hand around 1920.Poor whites and poor blacks picked cotton back then.)
As the tractor didn’t become widely used in the South until after 1900 with the invention of the gasoline tractor, and the mechanical cotton harvester didn’t get widely adapted until after World War 2, slavery would apparently have taken a long time dying out.
Wow. Bad history never dies, it just gets recycled. You know, there’s been a LOT of scholarship done since Charles Beard peddled his claptrap over half a century ago. Do some reading…..
I dont put much stock in recent “scholorship” of historical events, I go to the source documents to find out what people were saying AS THEY SAID IT.
There is history, and there is revisionist history. Go to the source and decide, not to someone ELSES filtered results
And as long as you don’t filter what you are looking for.
If I have access to ten primary source documents and I get the feeling that half are going to support my own inclinations, and half may move in the opposite direction, which ones do I send my time on? If you spend equal time, then you are doing it the right way, assuming you are seeking “truth” whatever that is. A majority of people seek what will support what they already believe.
It is ironic that the so-called “public servants” demand that the only course of action is for ever higher taxes. Taxes which at the state and local level are often weighted heavily to property (both home and vehicles) and sales taxes that fall most heavily upon the most vulnerable in our society.
How sad that retirees and others face the risk of losing their long paid for homes due to property taxes to feed the greedy “public servant” unions.
Who is the MASTER? Who is the Servant?
Now is the time to reset the equation. Outlaw all public employee unions. Reset their average wage to the prevailing average wage in the locale. Remove any and all excess benefits. if they refuse, strike, whatever…fire them..there are millions of unemployed workers who can step up and replace them…..
Since you brought it up, precisely which states rights were being infringed, or were threatened with infringement, that precipitated the U.S. Civil War? There is no evidence to support a “states rights” claim. The Democrats lost the Presidency through arrogance and stupidity. The slavers had made preparations for their treason long the election. Democrats received the overwhelming majority of the votes cast, but Lincoln won because he was first among loosers.
What?
This is another battle in a war about states rights and the constitution, neither of which mean much to this administration.
The uniqueness of the American constitution are the rights of our states to conduct their own business without interference from the Fed. That ground is fast being trampled on by this administration who feel that they have the right to interfer in any way they wish anywhere anytime, even stoopoing to scolding a cop doing his job at Cambridge for God’s sake.
Those separation of powers and the other separation of powers between the Admin, Legislature, and Judiciary AND our perfecing of the corporate model are in the end what has made this country what it is. Yes Howard Zinn, we people also had a lot to do with it. But sorry Howard and Matt Damon, your mob doesn’t make a democracy.
If the states do not retain their separate and defined constitutions and the right to govern their own internal affairs we are lost. Further if the public unions continue to control our legislatures by bullying and threats for their own benefit then their is going to be a struggle coming down the road that may look more like Gettysburg than even this article imagines.
Thanks
While is a nice conceit, as a way of writing, to analogize protests and public assemblies to complain to government about government as similar to this or that battle, we should instead hope and pray to whatever god we believe in that it is not the precursor of civil war, fruitless naval battles, nor any kind of military action. Writing myself as a veteran of two of America’s wars – the Vietnam War and the most recent Iraq – there is a considerable difference between those two kinds of things. Not only the differences pointed out, but between slaughter and argument. No matter how loud and uncivil demontrations get, they are preferable to wars, battles and the military supression of such demonstrations. All that is required in Wisconsin is for the state legislature to remain both calm and determined and, when the protestors go home, pass the legislation to neuter the public employees and teachers unions as they ought. To the extent that school children have been brought by the teachers without the children’s parents’ consent, those teachers and school officials – and whoever else – ought to be punished. Otherwise, that’s what I and millions of others have worn our nation’s uniforms for and served “in harm’s way” to preserve: public displays of disapproval for some proposed governmental action without widespread violence. No difference here between these folks in Wisconsin and Tea Party folks, other than the fact that I agree with the Tea Party and disagree with the Wisconsin folks who want to continue to feed from the public trough.
As a fellow vet, I agree with most of what you said, and encourage people to consider the points you raise, as you are mostly on target.
BUT: “No difference here between these folks in Wisconsin and Tea Party folks, other than the fact that I agree with the Tea Party and disagree with the Wisconsin folks who want to continue to feed from the public trough.”
You’re off target, need to adjust for windage …
The Tea party did NOT descent upon the Congress, and help the REPUBLICAN minority flee town to avoid voting on a bill (lets say health care?) that they disliked. The Tea Party faced a majority of legislators that supported it, but did not hi-jack the government over the recent vote of the people, that put those “adversaries” in charge.
The Tea Party worked within the system to convince people to see things their way at the next election. The Union Thugs that over ran the WI State House are NULLIFYING the will of the people, because they LOST THE ELECTION.
The Tea Party uses the System to change things, the Union Thugs say screw the system, its MY WAY OR ELSE. Rule by the will of thugs, elections be damned.
Since that is there position, I’d like to see the floor of that chamber cleared of these rioting criminals like ATTICA PRISON…
Disperse NOW, or be SHOT
I’ve got a better idea: how about we all cut way back on argument-by-analogy? The problem with this sort of argument is that you inevitably end up fighting over the portability of the analogy and the nature of the event that you’re trying to compare whatever you’re actually talking about to. Just argue about the way things are, not about how they’re similar to something else.
Nice comparisons.
I’m curious as to which battle Dr. Victor Davis Hanson would compare it to?
Rush Limbaugh and the Opiate Wars.
I-ll dink to taht!
“Gettysburg was a battle in a war over federalism and states’ rights — in this case the dubious and odious “right” to treat human beings as chattel — a cause that has given the phrase a notorious name for over a century and a half.”
The slavery issue was a small part, not the main cause of the war. Read Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address in which he tells the South you can keep your slaves but you cannot secede. It wasn’t until after the battle of Gettysburg (half way through the war) that he decided to shift the cause to slavery. But even there the Emancipation Proclamation was just a tool of war, freeing as it did only those slaves in States that were in “rebellion” against against the Union. You need to read DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln to learn the more important causes of the war.
Not only was slavery the main cause of the Civil War, it was the only cause of the Civil War.
You take slavery out of the picture and nobody is at odds with anybody about anything that would separate out a block of states.
Read Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address in which he tells the South you can keep your slaves but you cannot secede.
I’ve never read Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address before so I was quite suprised to find that you are right. Here’s the copy I found: http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html
I don’t completely follow his argument about why secession is unthinkable though. It seems to me that the most important right of all, before even freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, etc. is the right to depart your country without hindrance if you don’t like it there any more. This was one of my primary complaints about the Communist countries that refused to let their people leave, as epitomized by the Berlin Wall.
The right of a State to secede from a country, such as the United States, seems to me to just be an extension of that right. If a State no longer feels like it is getting a good deal in the country with which it agreed to associate, it should be free to pick up and leave if the country can no longer convince it that it is better to stay in the country than leave it. Hopefully, such a secession would be peaceful, like the secession of NOrway from Sweden in 1905 or the Czech Republic from Czechoslovakia in 1992.
The Emancipation Proclamation came after Antitiem (Sharpsville, I think it was to the Rebs.)
But these Battle analogies are just a way for the writer to try to grab a little attention to his/her topic. Hell, why not bring up Midway?
This analogy to the civil war implies that states rights will be overriden by Washington politicians because of populist demands in states without slaves? In this case does that mean populist demands in states with right to work laws? Really? I would have thought Wisconsin was more along the lines of the American Revolution, when American taxpayers were fed up with taxation without representation, thus electing the new leaders in Madison. The governor seems more like a founding father fighting with King George III (Obama) who paid the salaries of the Redcoats (union agitators).
Is this perchance the ‘Death Throws’ of the Democratic Party?
One can only hope…
The main problem with this analogy is that it is the outcome of the Civil War and the tactics used that brought the war that encouraged the Progressive movement.
One only need to read Teddy Roosevelt to understand this, and fact that Liberal Protestants marched forth to wed the Social Gospel with Government. They then joined forces with the secular end of Progressives, who were most definitely not religious, but by that point neither were the Liberal Protestants really, it took them until the 1960s to declare that God was dead, but in truth the belief in an orthodox Christianity had died many years before in Liberal Protestantism.
The Secular father of Progressives was Herbert Croly, whose father David Croly was the author of a pamphlet that was a purportedly by an abolitionist who was extolling the need for whites and blacks to marry. It was a fake from the Copperhead Croly, and it is from this publication that the word Miscegenation comes from, a made up word by David Croly, who was also a journalist from New York, as was his wife. Both subscribed to the Auguste Comte (founder of Sociology and student of Henry St. Simon, founder of Socialism, both of France and it’s post revolution Terror)theory of life and had young Herbert Croly, author of The Promise of American Life, baptized into Comte’s Church of Humanity, a secular “church” modeled on the Catholic church and it’s hierarchy.
The Nation magazine was started by abolitionists following the Civil War, including the son of William Lloyd Garrison. It should also be realized, though it seldom is because it is not taught in schools, that John Brown fanatic and spark to the Civil War, was in large part financed by several New England Transcendentalists. Henry Villard, bought The Nation and married the daughter of William Lloyd Garrison, producing Oswald Garrison Villard, one of the founders of the NAACP.
This combination of politics of N.E. Transcendentalists, Liberal Protestants and Secular Progressives brought us Woodrow Wilson, Eugenics and the idea that the Federal Governments job was to build the Utopia that the same believers had already tried by themselves at New Harmony, Oneida (guess where that silverware company came from)and Brook Farm.
That was the old Left, who the New Left labeled Conservatives.
The Civil War stopped Chattel Slavery, but it also very much grew Paternalist Government. Call it Secular Puritanism if you will, as it’s center was from New England, and it’s early practitioners were, by and large, raised in Calvinist theology. And just like Puritans of old, they believed they were the Elect, and thus had a right to control all aspects of life.
The Battle of Madison is finally push back. It is Gen. Picketts forces that have had enough of the Radical Reformation heaped on the country for the sin of slavery, and so this time I root for Picketts forces to win in order to find an equilibrium that has been sorely missing.
That is a long field to cross under fire from the full line of Union cannon.
Yep. Rand Simberg has stated as I have come to see it. Hopefully others of an independent persuasion will come to see it this way as well.
in this case the right of a state to rein in the new slaveholders
I’m sure the Left will object to this analogy, but when you boil down what is going on into the fact that they withhold from taxpayers a good portion of the fruits of our labor to pour into the funding of schemes and services they (the Left) subjectively decides serve the general “public good”, while the taxpayer does not agree with the price paid to provide those goods, what else is it but a form of slavery and theft?
The public employees unions can subjectively decide that the value of their service is X-amount, but if I, as a taxpayer, value that same service at something less, we have a problem. And if part of the way in which the unions are able to enforce that pricing power is through the structure of the negotiating rules, I, as a taxpayer, support anyone who will change those rules to push the outcome of the negotiation toward my valuation of the union members’ services. I’m not saying the value of the services provided is zero, but it certainly isn’t as high as the current prices.
Then, if you add in the economic crisis as context, in which everyone needs to re-evaluate their estimates of their future cash flows downward, it really becomes obvious that the taxpaying public is being overcharged for the union members’ services. The economic crisis is highlighting the discrepancy between value and price in a way which is impossible to ignore, as it was during the boom times.
It really is that simple and to the union members who don’t like it, tough.
Go rebels! Charge! Ooops, is that rhetoric too “violent”? Too f**king bad.
My thoughts also went to the Civil War, but this was Bull Run, the first major battle of that war, if you do not count blockading the Port of Charleston and few other skirmishes.
The analogy is apt. Like the Southern States the forces of Obama and the elites are without extensive self-manufacturing capability, and they require a peon-slave class to support them. Losing ground everywhere, they have been caught in the open field in a state that is not theirs. And we, like the northern forces are slower to reinforce our forces on the ground in Madison, where our enemy has the bulk of his forces there.
So Gettysburg is a great analogy.
—
But I join to talk about “State’s Rights”. The legal commentator Blackstone defines “rights” in his commentaries in much the sense the Founders of America and the Frames of the Constitution intended us to have them. To start, and number one, there are not just “rights”, there are “rights and wrongs”!
We are, by our Founding, a society and governments ruled by Natural Law — the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” in the phrase of the very first Founding Charter of the United States, that being the Declaration of Independence of July 2 through July 4 1776. Signed on the 2nd, announced publicly on the 4th, three days.
The overlap of the anniversaries of that Declaration — the birthdays of our Nation — with the Battle of Gettysburg was remarked on famously by Lincoln, “four-score and seven years ago”, when he came to Gettysburg four months later.
Lincoln — like nearly all lawyers and educated men of his time — breathed the legal ethos of Blackstone and sweated in through their pores. That the Law and Civil Society were governed and accorded to Natural Law “Rights and Wrongs”, was common coin of fixed weight.
Men being men, even a fixed weight of coin becomes debased — the edges clipped, the metal alloyed with cheaper elements, and paper bills of promises getting weaker and weaker replace hard fixed value coins of precious or valuable metal. “Wrongs” come parade as “rights”, even in Supreme Court rulings, viz Dred Scott. Viz the whole of chattel slavery — such slavery was always a wrong.
This is why I despise those who hoist a banner of State’s Rights — and say under that banner we might allow the states to define what a marriage is. Simply, there is no “right” to a marriage between two men, two women or man-woman and beast. Such people do not understand what “right” means!
There are rights and wrongs. Relabel that banner to “State’s Rights and Wrongs” and I am with you — for then it recognizes that even though sovereign in laws of man, the States too are subject to the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God. A State cannot declare James to be the Lawful Spouse of Richard, such a declaration is beyond its power. In 1863 those committed to upholding Natural Law — the Law of G-d — came with great force and violence to destroy and ruin those whose governments had refused to abide it. It was indeed a War between the States.
The siege of the battle of the Alamo began on Feb. 23 and ended March 6, 13 days against impossible odds. There was one Jacob Walker who died in the defense, so Governor Walker do not go wobbly.
I forgot to note that a large degree of what eventually became Progressives was due to the politics of German immigrants fleeing the failed 1848 revolution in Germany. By huge percentages these Germans, who primarily settled in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan, supported the Civil War as well as the politics after. As did the Germans who came in large droves starting around 1880, I know I am one of their descendants.
But I find that the forces of liberalism/progressives are the antithesis of what they say they believe in, my eyes opened post 9/11. As I took the time to learn the history that is not taught about all of progressivism and liberalism (they ARE not the same) I was shocked and dismayed to find so much that I had been taught to cherish was in fact not what it seemed as well as outright lies.
The New Left grew out of Madison Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin, it is a history in itself that is a fascinating look at European politics pre-WWII, transplanted to America.
The Old Left was closer to European Fascism that it was American Liberalism, including the merging of Liberal Protestantism with government forces, and the New Left closer to European Marxism than either the Old Left which despised Marxism Paricularly because of it’s rejection of religion, or American Liberalism. I could never decide if it was amusing or saddening that the Fascists accused FDR of being a Marxist and the Marxist accused FDR of being a Fascist. Both of these forms of “liberalism” however were in large part brought to this country by German Immigrants and New England Calvinists who sent their children to Germany for education as Germany in the late 1800s was considered to be the bastion of excellent education.
Socialism in all its forms is little more than a kinder, gentler Feudalism courtesy of Europe who has never known American style freedom. One of the outgrowths of that is unionism, peasants who are supposed to be made happy as long as they get a cut of what the aristocrats have. And like the mobs in France, the unions are mobs that have decided they don’t wish to share, they’ll just take over the Manor house and chop off heads, afterward they will eat, drink and be merry toasting their victory over the greedy.
Well here’s something you can research next old pal; (I think I know who you are). The real culprits here are the Federalists who duped the rubes into ratifying a Constitution, despite their fears that it would lead to centuries of big government. Who was right?
If we had never formed a strong country, then we would have to worry about it whacking us over the head. Kind of a Catch 22, though, isn’t it?
Er, would NOT have to worry…
Let us not get carried away with analogies in weak attempts at profundity. Keep it down and dirty as it deserves to be. Think of it as a pig farm, the pigs going into revolt, squealing that they want, no, demand more corn cobs and slop, no limitations and to hell with the other living things on the farm who don’t or can’t organize. Try however, not to think of the farmer as Barack Obama, contriving to screw irrevocably the other animals so as to , for whatever bizarre reasons, get the pigs on his side.
There has to be a limit to imagination lest we trip over into the vomitive.
The Battle at the Black Gate in Middle Earth — Aragorn (Walker) vs Orcs (Union Thugs). http://templeofmut.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/aragorn-walker-battles-union-orcs/
Who is Obama’s LOTR character: Decide from this selection — http://templeofmut.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/gates-of-mordor-report-todays-rally-of-tea-party-heroes-vs-union-orcs/
It is now evident that an “awakening” is occuring in Amerika (k) as it is now under the Obama regime and conservatism is taking hold to correct the ills of America. It is now time to join the movement which will take us right up to the 2012 elections and there-after. Say “good-bye” to political correctness, high Union wages & benefits, liberal whining and radical muslim goddling. America, you are the greatest! Wisconain is only the start. Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, Illinois and then California will be transformed………not “changed” as one politician has used in HIS campaign and we all know how that has turned out.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/site/comments/wisconsin-and-the-great-awakening/
How about Great Moments in democracy, and irony, as Wisconsin’s Democratic Party senators flee the democratic process? The foxes don’t want to be evicted from the hen house? The chicken hawks are fleeing the roost? The new civility prohibiting violent battle metaphors only applies to Republicans?
Sorry, but no. The Confederacy came to a well-defined end. We would be deluding ourselves to think that liberalism/progressivism/whatever-they-call-it-next will ever quit. The temptation to spend other people’s money is just too great. It’s Greece with snow.
Study the public service unions and government pension systems and welfare state and the consequent insolvency ofWiemar Germany is you want an analogy.
Now that is an analogy worth debating, and one that is too seldom heard.
Let’s hope the (marginally IMO) civil unrest gets no worse. Should the Wisconsin Governor decide the National Guard needs to be called out to restore some semblance of order – will Obama call in the US Army to negate the wishes of Governor Walker?
Think it couldn’t happen? Who really thought Obama would throw his weight in behind the rioters? I was quite shocked by this – I suppose in hindsight I shouldn’t have been.
Does anyone wonder why ammo has been so hard to come by in the last couple of years?
Are there riots? I missed that.
Here’s my analogy- The Governor wants to fix the flat tire, the unions think driving on the ‘doughnut’ is enough.
The unions and the 14 Dem Senators who fled the state won’t even stop the car to see if the tire is flat–they’re gonna drive on the rims, and to hell with the cost of repair.
The correct analogy is to D-day, the event when the forces of righteousness breached the defenses of the forces of the tiny greedy sliver of humanity that sought to dominate and control the rest of the world.
We’re on the beach, but haven’t yet climbed the cliffs, and the Panzer tanks are rolling to Normandy.
Actually, Hitler held the Panzers for two weeks because he was convinced (by some devious Allied slight-of-hand) that the real attack was to be in the Calais area. Apologies for picking nits on you, friend..heh
I think the Battle of the Bulge is a better analogy. Like the Germans, the public unions are on the retreat. This is their last stand. If they win, the course of the war might change. If they lose, then it’s on to Berlin.
Well, it has been cold enough, we have the snow. How is the air cover?
Why the animosity towards gov’t workers????
It’s all because we all SEE the front line govt workers on the job and we are repulsed. Repulsed!
Compare a toll booth taker with a retail cashier. UNBELIEVABLY, that toll booth govt worker has a good salary & benefit package. The cashier doesn’t.
Register your kid for sports at your local recreation center. Easy easy job any volunteer could do well. Those gov’t slow-moving registration workers have a good salary package!
Look at 85% of the teachers in your public school system. Their package is better than that of a corporate training mgr who’s in a plane every Mon before 7am and not home until Sat night at midnight.
The private sector job is MUCH more demanding…but their pay package is lower or equal.
And of course the perverbial post office and DMV front line people are PATHETIC! Take a look at their packages…you will be appalled!
Because govt doesn’t have to worry about COMPETITION, its employees’ attitude towards excellence in usually non-existent.
Waaay too much salary & benefits FOR WHAT THEY DO!
Why are grade school teachers required to have degrees anyway? Adolescents have suffient knowledge to teach up to the 4th or 5th grade. The real skill requirement is managing children. Many mothers who never studied beyond high school are as good at that as teachers with 6 years of advanced education. It’s more of a talent than an acquired skill. And 6 months assisting in a classroom with a natural teacher trumps all of the master’s degrees on the planet.
What we need for grade school is people who love children and want to help them learn, not people who want to make big bucks for working 6 or 7 hours a days, 180 days a year.
On average home schooled children out perform those in public schools. For several years the home schooled have dominated the National Spelling Bee. At the same time some civility in order, those who are down on all teachers, walk a mile in their moccasins. Too many of the best and the brightest quit teaching after just a few years. Do you wonder why? So do I.
You’re right, Contrarian. As a former 2nd grade teacher, I know the problem begins at the university level. Education degrees were awarded to very poor “teachers” who did well, sometimes exceptionally well, on WRITTEN tests. Their actual teaching skills were terrible…terrible! Still, they received education degrees and stayed in the classroom until retirement.
Teaching is an Art, not a science!
I agree. Fire the teachers who are out gallivanting around on the taxpayer dime, and hire the parents to teach. Especially the ones who lost their jobs because they had to stay home with their kids. They can certainly do a better job than those leeches did.
One reason home schooling works is because just a few kids are being taught by a person who can devote his her life to those few kids. As a result, their needs etc can be directly catered to/utilized. When you have a classroom full of all different kinds of kids…you have a big challenge, which is not to say that all teachers meet it well, but don’t try to say that it is easy.
they need degrees to validate their statist indoctrination and, thus, verify the real goals of public education
Once we had a legislature.
In Wisconsin
Now we have a mob.
Thanks to the Democrats.
Who ran away from the job they were elected to do.
Across state lines.
And were praised for it by Obama, Pelosi, and Jackson.
Vote Democratic if you want to say
Once we had a legislature.
Minions? Really?
I understand there is temptation to embellish, but your words will carry more weight if you use them accurately.
Enlighten us! If you can.
Interesting analogy, and always a good post since any number can play this game.
We could also liken Madison to the Battle of Atlanta…in this case, the forces of smaller government and fiscal responsibility, having taken Chattanooga last November and having advanced from there, are besieging the heart and keystone of public sector unionism. This battle must be won and Madison must fall before the “March to the Sea” can commence.
And like Atlanta, in the theater closest to the Federal capital, the trench warfare is constant and remorseless, with progress being measured in yards for the gallons of political blood being spilled.
The outcome of this struggle is not in doubt, since an economic parasite
cannot win an overt assault upon its host organism. Public sector unionism will be defeated, and not just at the state and local levels, but at the Federal level as well.
I wait for the Congress to legislate Federal “Right to Work” laws, which will de-facto grant federal workers a raise simply by their opting out of union membership, (they will save themselves the annual dues, the working dues, the PAC contributions, and all the other thumb-greasing “fine print” funding scams that unions extract from their thralls).
Once the Feds no longer protect “closed-shop” unionism in the civil service, the war will be won, and there will be but mopping-up actions to conduct.
A caution should be sounded here, though.
Lack of a trade union does NOT give one license to mistreat and abuse one’s employees. Without the union labor pool to call upon, the businessperson will have to compete to obtain and keep his or her labor force.
Workers will still organize, albeit laterally instead of vertically. Such a system obtains even among us “backwards” Gulf of Mexico “Oil Patch” mariners, thanks to e-mail and the cell phone. Networking is how its done, all of us have sailed with everyone else.
Edison Chouest Offshore had a case a few years ago where they launched two brand new ships, but did not have the crews necessary to sail them, their pay being so low and their treatment of their workers so reputedly bad.
ECO’s competitors, treating their workers well enough to keep them aboard, secured the contracts for offshore services that ECO could not deliver with idle boats.
Rand,
The left’s fury over Gov. Walker’s actions shows that they understand how significant these events are. If Walker and the Republicans succeed, this is the beginning of the end for public employee unions.
It’s one thing to cite John Kennedy’s tax cuts, but throwing FDR’s comments about public employee unions in the face of the Democrats surely must give them pause. If the man who gave us the Wagner Act and the NLRB could say that public employee unions are a bad thing the Democrats have no real reply other than that they’re preserving the political power of the unions who finance those same Democrats.
Some of the nastier Walker=Hitler signs were held by Teamsters. The public employee unions have become an immense tail wagging a shrinking dog. Only 12% of American private sector workers are in unions and now a majority of union members are public employees. The AFL-CIO (the I stands for industrial, btw) president said recently that his primary focus are the interests of public employees. To have any political clout, the private sector unions and their members go along with the public employees, but I think that eventually there will be a schism.
Most private sector union members look at their own contributions to their pensions and health plans and then at Gov. Walkers rather modest request from the unions and they have to say that he’s not being unreasonable. They’ll also wonder how come public employees have such a better deal than they have.
That will lead to a schism in the labor movement between the public sector unions like AFSCME and SEIU and the private sector unions like the UAW.
yes
the lefty reaction demonstrates that the gubner’s actions are spot on and effective
the left’s inability to mask their true intentions whenever its lifeblood becomes threatened is the only evidence we need and the only thing that can go wrong is to “take the boot off the throat” of this national cancer…
instead of backing off, the gubner needs to apply the coup d grace and end the suffering of this pitiless swine
Apt analogy. Ayn Rand would approve. I have not liked the comparisons to Greece nor Egypt. Especially Egypt. This truly is a battle to determine whether free citizens can be held as slaves to the unions. We cannot.
A little odd for an analogy mostly because public servants are just that, servants. I agree the unions don’t know ‘their place’ anymore though.
I’m a public health worker in NY and hate my union. I can tell you my civil service job doesn’t fit the stereotypical overpaid inept slob profile – I find persons infected with disease and bring them to treatment. Its dangerous [try looking for honest-to-God crack whores infected with HIV by knocking on doors asking for "Peaches". No you aren't armed and no, you can't ID yourself] and ill-paid [I clear high-20s annually]. Benefits? Yeah, well I think I need healthcare & death benefits.
I’m not always sure why I do it although I think weakly holding off epidemics and attempting to save lives is why the Public wants that kind of servant & service. If a strike is ever called, I won’t join it. People could die if I’m not doing it.
But you know, you could end my job tomorrow if only people were responsible to themselves and to one another, and I’d be happy if that happened.
We, ourselves, are not your enemies. Many honestly do just want to help the community they’re in. The unions are a problem even for us, doing little for us and angering the public to no purpose. The most obnoxious unions represent the least-needed & most replaceable of the civil servants, IMO.
Anyway, yes I’m watching all this closely and am offended by the WI unions. Dunno how crucial it’ll all be to NYers but I’m not liking what I see as the potential fallout for either side of the divide [and about which I'll currently be silent].
Please be aware that any violence expressed at gatherings to protest one
view or the other will be met with troops,certainly national guard, if
not federal. This in turn provides Obumma with a chance to declare a
national emergency, and suspend any elections. The man is betting on it,
and nobody can provide violence better than a union. I would ask all Tea
Party folks to remember this,and keep your powder dry. Our chances will come.
While many people have been re-educated by the media to believe that no one in America can ever commit a conspiracy, what Warlord suggests may become highly likely if the left feels it is losing.
I saw what the left did to the TeaParty movement at the TeaParty demonstration just prior to the approval of Obamacare. The left sent a trusted Associated Press reporter to a staged racial incident allegedly between a TeaParty person and a few black congressmen. The reporter’s article was all about the alleged racial incident and had no reporting on the TeaParty Demonstration that was his supposed reason for being there. His report was so damning, and was repeated in every media outlet in the country, it completely hid the legitimate demands of the thousands of TeaParty people, and for a time had the country believe the left wing lie that the TeaParty is racist. Eventually some black Conservatives called a press conference and put the accusation to bed, although it keeps trying to resurrect itself..
I believe the alleged spitting on a Congressman was a staged confrontation, that the reporter was in on. When he wrote his article it started with something like there were hundreds, maybe thousands of demonstrators, who knows since there is no official count. I don’t even think he had any knowledge of the crowd which was many thousands, it actually looked like a Fourth of July concert on the lawn before the fireworks. The reporter and his associates did not try to follow the alleged perpetrators and get a plate number from their vehicle, and did not even give a creditable description to the police or anyone else. (The Congressmen involved later chose not to press any charges).
So having seen this left wing desperate display of fraud at a simple rally, I would not be surprised to see what Warlord has indicated, occur, and if election time gets close and they get really desperate, we may see a staged shooting at left wing demonstrators that is blamed on the TeaParty. The left has proven they will stop at nothing until they win.
Scott Walker: a profile in integrity
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/feb/18/scott-walker/wisconsin-gov-scott-walker-says-his-budget-repair-/
I agree, besides being a huge Faulkner fan. (I can still visualize Shelby Foote reading those words from Ken Burns CIVIL WAR doc – in his slow southern drawl)
Besides seeing some of the MSNBC coverage – in particular Chris Matthews inviting the current editor in chief of THE NATION – who spewed forth a diatribe that was vintage John L Lewis circa the Wilson administration – while totally butchering the facts surrounding what Gov Walker is pursuing – there are a number of striking historical story lines the left are gloming together – starting with Gettysburg.
I also heard/watched John Heilemann (co-author of GAME CHANGE) amplify the Nancy Pelosi version when on Bill Maher this past friday; {paraphase} ‘it’s an assualt by Republicans on the democratic process’ – or words to that effect. Why? Again – his definition – because, since CITIZENS UNITED, the unions political contributions money wise, coupled with their ability to mobilize bodies for grass roots (i.e. free volunteers) political campaigning, represent the only ‘hope for the Democrates to remain competitive.’ (an intersting statement since they, as you noted, represent so little of the workforce. What does that say about the ‘rennagade’ rank & file who vote Republican? I mean that hardly swells the all ready miniscule numbers now does it? Or the Dems inability to inspire volunteers? You know people who if they don’t show risk loosing their job)
Heilemann’s summation in a nutshell was Pelosi’s excuse for the mid-term blood bath – a narrative the MSM dutifully regergitated verbatum. (and a probable reason Obama wedged it into his State of the Union address even before suffering those defeats – supporting Pelosi’s reasoning when tryign to rally the troops)
Walker, even more than Chris Christie, has focused what the Californication of public employee unions have wrought in the past twenty plus years or so. Namely, that state operating budgets are being swollowed whole with these unfunded liabilities – EVEN SURPASSING THE KNOWN PROBLEMS OF MEDICARE AND SOCIAL SECURITY!
Christie in his recent speech at American Enterprise Institute summerized the argument in a elequently – repeatedly referrencing newly elect Cumo of NY as his ‘bedmate’ (NY Times quote!) in this stuggle.
That, as Gettysburg was during the civil war, public union piracy is ground zero for what ails us now, i.e. fiscal insanity in Washington. Furthermore, Gettysburg proved as you noted the turning point in the war to save the union and end slavery.
What followed for the next hundred years was institutionalized racism. For progressives today, especially exemplified with our first Black President, the same civil rights struggle that de-institutionalized racism has from their perspective, rightfully, never ended.
Even as seminal a final decider as the Supreme Court is divided on just how far we have come with our attempts at de-institutionalizing said problem.
Hense Jesse Jackson takes it upon himself to show up in Wisconsin to preach. Part of what he preaches, and part of what divides the right and the left in this country today, and not just within explicit issues of race, is simultaneously the fundemental issue at stake in Walker’s crusade; STATES RIGHTS. Something that remains illegitimate from the lefts view – since it was exterminated in the 60′s.
Because beginning with the defeat of the Confederacy from the dawn of the twentieth century right through the civil rights 50′s thru ’70′s – States Rights was the refuge and bastion of white supremacy. With LBJ’s civil rights act, all the way through Nixon, states rights was driven from the political lanscape.
Thus Wisconsin is Gettysburg on philosophical as well as fiscal grounds.
In the 1980′s, States Rights arguments in court as well as the court of public opinion were ressurrected, becoming the bedrock when fighting back against the encroaching welfare state, notably in the Abortion and ERA debate.
In the ’90′s, it was states rights that led the way, not washington and not the federal courts, in winning welfare reform. Michigan led under Tommy Thompson but Wisconsin and Ohio were likewise important states to lead that fight – which eventually was taken up in congress for national change.
The left did everything possible to prevent this – since theres is the cause that is Obama’s – a cause exemplified with public unions; the personification of Keynesian economics. It is why Obama continues to this day to insist he ‘created jobs’. It is why Obamacare is about the government takeover of healthcare; how many ‘union’ doctors do you know today? Even nurses?
Then as now, as we saw in the past eleciton cycle with the birth and explosion of the Tea Party movement, the two broadest criticisms to dismiss and discredit that movement came as well from this same narrative from the left – the same narrative unfurled throughout the civil rights movment.
Those who promote states rights are ‘angry’ & ‘endorce and encourage violence’. Of course they are racists, and are most dangerous because we now have a Black President. The debate over who produces the most provocative signs at protests has never ended since the first shouting at the first town hall meetings about Obamacare two years ago. [throw in Napolitano's warning about returning war vets mimicing the rise of Tim McVey in the '90's]
Now we have Lawrence O’Donnell, a former screenwriter for the West Wing, and Ed Schultz, a former shock jock, taking over for the displaced Olbermann pushing the lefts screed about class warfare and a resugent Union Movement taking hold before our eyes.
In contrast, I heartily recommend Rick Perlsteins NIXONLAND for those who have forgotten the actual history of the ’60′s and ’70′s – when starting with Watts in LA in ’65 race riots exploded for the next five years throughout the northeast and midwest. It’s inconvienent for the O’Donnell’s on the left who push the cliff notes about those explosions. They were hardly simple militia led watering the tree of liberty affairs, or solely about police brutality.
Yet those violent years are so often conflated with the ‘McCarthism’ of the 50′s to define simplistically the ever lurking presense of facism within the American Conservative camp.
Nor do they square with the undenible efforts to provoke violence we are now watching from so-called labor leaders like Trumpka. Or race editors like Jackson. There is a striking contrast to what Tea Party rallies have been about and how they have proceeded with what is taking place in the Wisconsin dome today.
The latter is reminiscent of the Teamsters strike I witnessed as a child in 1970, with truckers proudly bransishing pistols and rifles in their cabs. These screaming yuks in Wisconsin are pinning for a showdown with the National guard – and scream it openly.
To your point on Gettysburg. Hopefully it stays metaphoric & bloodless.
Obama, despite his jumping foot in mouth first when claiming Walker is trying to recend ALL COLLECTIVE BARGINING, (He isn’t for those who are listening) I doubt the White House is thrilled to have this fight.
Because the more conservatives can illegitimize the largess of these public unions in the name of restoring credibility to lead on fiscal restraint, the better to refute the vision Obama & Pelosi have for conducting governance.
So what could be a better test of the Obama Adminstrations support for unionism?
Isn’t it curious that he, nor his labor secretary Solis, are no where near the biggest union tussel since the Teamsters struck in ’70, or at least the Writers strike in ’08?
Could it be that the American public isn’t buy the class warfare bunk comming out of the mouth of Trumpka, Schultz and O’Donnell?
Gettysburg indeed.
If we are using Civil War analogies I would go with the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864. As many here will recall Grant decided to move on Richmond by a direct route that took the Army fo the Potomac through the tangled second-growth forest known as the Wilderness. Lee knew that his only chance of stopping Grant was to attack since the wooded terrain negated much of Grant’s advantage in numbers. There were three days of brutal fighting wher Lee inflicted tremondous casualties on Grant’s forces (and vice versa.) Most commentators believe the Grant suffered a tactical defeat.
The Army of the Potomac had seen this before under McClellan, Pope and Hooker. They expected to once again retreat back north to Washington and refit. Instead Grant kept pushing south and never wavered in his determination to defeat Lee and capture Richmond.The battles over the next year were intense and bloody but Grant, resisting heavy pressure from, among others, Democrats in the north, achieved his objective. Hopefully Governor Walker will have the same long-term fortitude.
Actually, I see it as a displaced and practical effort to bring down the elected tyrant by other means. Excellent.
…. Some have called it “Greece with snow,” as those (slurping parasitically at the public trough) have been rioting and protesting over even a slight diminution of (its unearned and undeserved bounty) ….
Worth repeating that America’s mobbed-up-unionist “teachers” have long long long also been its Greeks.”
And now, at last, they have provided Wisconsin’s governor with his Reagan Opportunity.
Tell them don’t let the door PATCO their asses as they exit.
I vote for controlling the urge to make analogies entirely!
Even the best of them — a very few — are the bluntest of instruments, replete with questionable assumptions. All too often, they are simply a variant of arguing by assertion or avoiding more material analysis.
Introducing an analogy almost immediately shifts debate to the aptness or inaptness of the comparison instead of the actual issue at hand. If you would like to initiate an examination of Gettysburg — instead of Wisconsin — then, by all means, draw that analogy! Alas, entire discussions are frequently derailed by subsequent extrapolations used to “prove” or “refute” points which are not otherwise supportable.
Pattern recognition is an essential, emblematic, human skill, but our desire to fit complex phenomena into simple templates, and the faulty analogies which so often result, can quickly lead us into serious error. Easy, incendiary comparisons to Greece, Egypt or assorted civil wars strike me as particularly unhelpful when it comes to exploring probable outcomes in Wisconsin. Is there an American Mubarak here? What practical purpose does the reality distortion field in which the answer to such questions is yes serve? By the time we finishing debating that point, our unlikely consensus will have already been overrun by events.
When Santayana recommended learning from history, I don’t think he had conjuring up metaphorical bloodbaths in mind. The fundamental problem with his advice, of course, is that history itself is a blunt instrument. Sometimes it repeats itself, and sometimes it does not. What analogy could have prepared us for the explosive rise of the tea parties? We can look for retrospective similarities now, but reliable predictions are always easier in hindsight.
Well said.
But it is so tempting to throw all our Gettysburg lore out there. What was the title of Shelby Foote’s Gettysburg chapter. “The stars in their courses,” maybe.
If you want an analogy, perhaps the best one would be the ending of Alice in Wonderland where she wakes up from her dream. Unlike in that novel, however, Alice wakes up to find that she has gone to sleep on a nest of stinging ants and they are biting her.
Let’s see. The Lusitania was sunk in 1915. The Battle of Jutland occurred in 1916. So it was sunk in the absence of the Battle of Jutland.
I really don’t get this point.
I perused a huffpo article (thanks alot Drudge!!!) regarding this dustup in Wisconsin.. omg.
The opinionated, go nowhere diatribes in the comments section is un-be-liev-able.
A sad testament in how long our public education, college programs have retarded and failed the young and old alike.
Tell me again the ‘progress’ the DoEd has made in its 30 + years?
Yep, the Madison affair is a cry for freedom from plantation politics that dupe and bully the few to extort the many.
Given the odds and lay of the land, the defeat of Pickett’s futile parade dress march across a mile of open field from Seminary Ridge to Cemetery Ridge into the face of dug-in Union rifes and cannon, aka Pickett’s Charge, isn’t an apt metaphor for the Madison struggle.
If metaphor is needed, seems like the Union heroism at Little Round Top, which required fixed bayonets to defeat a flanking Confederate force the day before Pickett’s Charge, is the mold that fits Madison right now.
I will bet a round of cheese that the average Wisconsin student would not have a clue who Rufus Dawes was or the 6th Wisconsin Infantry. However you would be hard pressed to not find one who knows who Rosa Parks was.
OK, tell me about Rufus Dawes. I’m listening.
I think the most apropos analogy really is Greece With Snow. But when I heard of the threats to legislators, and of Tea Party and other activists going to Madison to counterprotest, I immediately thought of, not any Civil War battle, but Bleeding Kansas. I’m surprised nobody else has thought of this.
IMHBLO, In reality, what we are seeing is a well timed complimentary sympathetic action playing on the hardships sustained by, in this case, the (ignorant) people of Wisconsin, due to irresponsible government spending and subsequent increases in taxation (to cover those foolish spending programs) and the mental anguish such poor leadership has leveraged against them by predatory Marxist, Socialist, Communist subversive groups.
But, that’s just my humble but lovable opinion.
Would someone out there please explain “WI Teachers’ Union collective bargaining” to me. Seems simple to me: The unions says the teachers want more money & benefits. The state says, “No, we KNOW you want them but you can’t have them.”
The end.
Why can’t that happen? That’s what happens when we in the private sector want more money. “Don’t let me stand in your way of getting what you want. Goodbye. Next!”
Wisconsin: What’s the Right Analogy?
Greece, plainly and simply.
Your analogy to Gettysburg is ironic in one very important way. The bulk of the “Iron Brigade” of the U.S. Army consisted of three wisconsin regiments. The Iron Brigade played a very important role on the first day of the battle and remained true to their nickname in holding off a brutal assault by the enemy. We can hope that the Wisconsin Governor and his Republican colleages can be our new Iron Brigade.
And that Walker will last longer than Reynolds did.
The term you are looking for is: “Cold Civil War”
It started to come into fashion circa 2008 (although used before then by various people), and it is used to describe the twilight conflict within our culture that is going on.
Can I add my two cents? This great battle in Madison makes me proud to be an American. The two sides drew close and not one shot was fired, not one casualty, not one bloody nose. Maybe it took a Civil War to knock it into our heads, but we now know how to alter a government with protests, and votes. I’m not on the side of the Unions, but I respect them.
What can you say about a class of people that believe that there will always be new and increased taxes and the revenues resulting from them will always be applied to their favored style of government by Ponzi scheme?
Why is the Governor involved in local schools? Isn’t he doing the same thing that the Federal Government is doing? What if I want to live in a school district with excellent schools, and I and my neighbors want to attract the very best teachers. Shouldn’t we have the right to hire and build the best? What right does the state governor or legislature have to interfere with local schools? What if we want to build a sports program or a science program, why should we have to run it through the state? I thought we were trying to limit government interference not increase it.
Are you describing rank and file public union workers and their leadership (including a certain well-known commune-it-ty organizer)?
Taxation is Slavery!
Absolutely right. If we had never formed this damned country, then we would never have to pay taxes. I blame George Washington.
or what about Sherman’s march
we must completely remove the impetus enabling the left to conduct its operations and sap the will of the entire entitlement mentality
total war is not pretty nor should it be lest we become too fond of it
Sherman was very effective against civilians, not so much against the army of the Confederacy
On his way to Atlanta, he whupped em every time except once.
After Atlanta what little Reb army was left down there, went elsewhere.
Then he made Georgia howl. A terrible business, but he believed that the Rebs had to pay a price until they surrendered.
Let’s hope Jutland is not a good analogy:
it topped a twenty-year naval arms race
but rendered no decision. A tragic waste.
H. L. Mencken had a better analogy for
the Battle of Gettysburg:
“The Gettysburg Address”
from The Smart Set, May 1920
By H. L. Mencken
It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense.
Think of the argument in it. Put it into the
cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this:
that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg
sacrificed their lives to the cause of
self-determination—-that the government
of the people, by the people, for the people,
should not perish from the earth. It is difficult
to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers
in the battle actually fought against self-determination;
it was the Confederates who fought for the right of
their people to govern themselves. The Confederates
went into battle free; they came out with their freedom
subject to the supervision of the rest of the country—and
for nearly twenty years that veto was so efficient that
they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political
sense, than so many convicts in the penitentiary.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Pathetic nonesence…
The rebs, champions of self determination?
The Confederates were rounding up FREE BLACKS BORN AND RAISED IN THE NORTH in Adams County PA during their “crusade for self determination”, and sending them south to be sold into slavery.
One of the most famous pictures from Gettysburg is a nice “middle class” level farm house that was mistakenly identified in the early days (years?)as General Meads Headquarters during the battle.
It actually belonged to the Brian Family, a free black family that fled to avoid capture and slavery, AS WAS BEING DONE TO ALL FREE BLACKS THE CONFEDERATES ENCOUNTERED.
The Myth of Southern Chivalry and the Gentleman Robert…
Treason and Traitor, forgiven by a better people than THEY ever were.
Public sector Unions are a backdoor way to fund the democrat party with the TAXPAYER’s money. Public sector Unions are nothing more than a scheme to FORCE taxpayers to send millions to democrats each election. The Union receives the “dues” which are paid exclusively by taxpayers to public Union employees, they forward it to “the party”. It is a money laundering scheme and should be subject to RICO laws.
When one steps back and looks at this in the context of years of evolving in the work and union environment we see that the Unions have in fact replaced the previous vile conduct of employers in the 1920′s, 30′s and 40′s. Employers use to strongarm their employees and threaten them with firing to keep them in line. Now the unions who were SUPPOSE to help them has become irrelevant with the plethora of regulations like the Civil Rights Act, ADA, ADEA and the EEOC and Department of Labor. There are more hoops that managers and employers have to jump through and employees have more than adequate protection. The Unions are unncessary except to extract power and money from members. Let’s not forget that unions demand “involvement” from their membership for political elections, feet on the ground in protests …all which protect the unions, the union bosses and their fat cat salaries. Don’t hear anyone mentioning their salaries, eh? The unions drag high performers down by rewarding slackers on the same level of superior performers…who the heck needs that?
If the “Battle of Wisconsin” = “Battle of Gettysburg”
is Governor Walker = General Meade, or Josiah Lawrence Chamberlain?