Mad Rant: Riots and Unions

Unrest is spreading in the United States, making larger trends harder to ignore, beginning in Wisconsin but rapidly moving beyond. They are being driven by trade unions, in the case of Wisconsin by public workers unions. That is mostly because private workers unions have driven most businesses out of Wisconsin, and many other states, by making the cost of production too high. Why pay a king’s ransom to hire unionized American workers when you can get slave labor to do the same job in Communist China? So, today, most of the union members in America are public sector workers, government employees, in other words, people who are paid by the government with tax money rather than business owners who pay from their own income. This includes everyone from low-level bureaucrats and pencil-pushers to teachers and police officers. In the old days, factory workers were the backbone of the union movement. Today it is anyone who does not produce any sort of product but is paid with money forcibly taken from those who do.

Looking back, we can see a common thread here. Riots in France, Greece, Spain, even Egypt and the United States have all been largely driven by unions. Most especially in Greece it was public workers who were the most outraged at the bankrupt government being forced to cut back on their benefits. It is also very telling that in the coverage of every one of these protests that red shirts and red flags are always visible. Lest we forget, the Bolshevik plague that brought down the Tsar in Russia came to maturity in the bosom of the labor unions. The bulk of the Russian population consisted of the rural peasantry but Lenin purposely wrote off the peasants as potential Bolsheviks because they were too religious, too loyal to the Tsar (their “Little Father”) and too individualistic from living by the sweat of their brow. Instead, he purposely went after the urban industrial workers and their unions because they tended to be less religious, less loyal to traditional authority and more given to the ‘mob mentality’ or collectivism. Their survival, after all, did not depend on individual initiative in a factory but on being just one part among many, depending on all others doing their job.

This is revolutionary subversion at its heart, plain and simple, dressed up with the usual catch-phrases of “the workers”, “the people” and “democracy”. The last, of course, is the most farcical. In Wisconsin union protesters were marching and shouting, “This is what democracy looks like”. Of course, the flight of the Democrat senators from Wisconsin in order to stop all business in the senate betrays the truth that this is a slap in the face to the democratic, republican model they claim to be upholding. After all, the Republican Governor and Republican majorities in the senate and the assembly were all democratically elected and yet, rather than accept the outcome of the election, the Democrats abandon their state in order to suppress majority rule. They have done the same in my own state more than once in the past. A group long in power, loses that power to a new majority (democratically elected) and because they can no longer have their way they refuse to participate and run away. How is that for democracy? How is that for the idea of majority rule?

What we have here has nothing to do with helping the poor or downtrodden. The people being affected by the cutbacks in Wisconsin have far more generous pay and benefits than most of the taxpayers in the private sector who pay their salaries. Nor are even all public sector unions targeted by the cuts as the Governor, not surprisingly, excused the police and fire unions as they had supported his candidacy for governor. The teachers unions did not -hence they are called to sacrifice while the policemen are not (though just to show you what loyalty is worth, many police and firemen have joined the protest anyway, simply to show solidarity with other union members). So, putting aside the usual cases of ‘you do for me and I do for you’ we see that these protests are yet another case of the privileged revolting while claiming to carry on the struggle of the “common man”. And, as icing on the cake, there were shout-outs of support to the unions at the Academy Awards and there are few things more certain in life than that whatever spoiled, leftist Hollywood elites are for I will be against.

These are the same people who live in vast palaces in California but only part time in order to avoid the high taxes enacted by politicians the Hollywood types support. They make tens of millions of dollars for very little work while at the same time condemning people in business who make an equivalent amount of money while at the same time providing valuable and even essential goods and services rather than simply providing entertainment. They are no different at heart than the French aristocrats and high-ranking clerics who championed the revolution “for the people” which brought nothing but ruin to those people; and do not be fooled, it was the common people who suffered most because of the revolution. It was the same in Britain where the wealthy parliamentary elites championed “the people” and called King Charles a “tyrant” when the burden of taxation began to fall on them and their vast fortunes. It is the same story going back to ancient Rome; political elites condemning Julius Caesar as a tyrant, in the name of “the people” whereas it was Caesar who provided peace, stability, jobs for the citizenry.

Alexander Hamilton, the most maligned yet imitated American Founding Father, famously said, “…for it is a truth, which the experience of all ages has attested, that the people are commonly most in danger when the means of ensuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion”. This is why unions and the whole social welfare state they are part of are bringing down the economies of the western world. This is why liberal, (often elected) republican governments around the world today hold far more power and exercise more control over their peoples than any tyrant, dictator or absolute autocrat in history. King Charles I of Britain cared for his people and their rights, his enemies that fought in their name tyrannized them as never before. King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette had real compassion and concern for their subjects while the revolutionaries butchered them in record numbers. It was the same in communist revolutions from Russia to other countries all around the world. When a prince, king or emperor holds his people in his hand, they are sensitive to every twitch of a muscle but when wrapped in the coils of republicanism they all too often sleep soundly while being slowly squeezed to death. One more reason why I remain, as always … The Mad Monarchist.