Changing the Debate

On March 4, Rasmussen Reports released a poll that showed 60 percent of Wisconsin voters disapproved of Governor Scott Walker and 48 percent “strongly” disapproved of him. The progressive campaign to destroy the Wisconsin governor is yet another sign that the radical left is growing ever more desperate.

They are rapidly ratcheting up their smear tactics, vile verbal assaults, and lies. Knowing that they may not have another opportunity like this for decades to come if they should fail to achieve their objective to paint America red, they consider every tactical trick – no matter how reprehensible – to be on the table.

I doubt most everyday citizens ever thought about the possibility of angry government employees implementing a sixties-style takeover of a state capitol building. Or fourteen Democratic senators leaving the state to avoid voting on legislation that was not to their liking. Now, the massive negative-ad blitz has gone beyond ugly, and it’s clear that it’s being orchestrated by Obama and his union pals. (Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO president, has openly bragged that he talks to the White House every day and visits “two to three times a week.”)

I find it quite interesting that the far left is a minority in the United States, as it has been in all other countries where collectivist revolutions have succeeded in taking control of the government. The reason for this noxious minority’s success is that its members believe so strongly in their moral superiority that they are able to rationalize the most outrageous lies, raucous protests, and, if necessary, out-and-out violence. Plain and simple, they believe their noble end justifies any and all means necessary to achieve it.

As they have demonstrated throughout history, the progressives have an endless array of tools at their disposal. First and foremost, they are masters at recruiting and utilizing “useful idiots” – e.g., the Hollywood crowd, college kids, and the totally uninformed (i.e., those who are obsessed with college and pro sports, buying and learning how to use the newest digital gadgets, and tales of the latest adventures of Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen, and Paris Hilton). To the government’s delight, their lives are so filled with bread and circus that there is no time to notice that Western civilization is burning to the ground.

But none of this would matter if Republicans would straighten their backbones and do the bidding of those who gave them a majority in the House last November. Unfortunately, at least at this point, it doesn’t appear that is going to happen.

Take Wisconsin, for example. Some Republicans are now responding to union and Democratic threats and verbal abuse by going on the defensive. They are increasingly falling prey to the progressives’ age-old strategy of changing the nature of the debate.

The focus in Wisconsin should be on how to get the protestors out of the capitol building and what steps need to be taken to get them fired from their jobs. The focus should be on finding the fastest method for getting recall petitions underway to remove the fourteen AWOL Democratic senators from office. The focus should be on prosecuting both teachers and doctors who were involved in the writing and receiving of fraudulent medical excuses.

But the intimidating left always insists that it’s counterproductive to dwell on the past. Once they’ve planted the seeds for a particular program or objective (e.g., Obamacare), their position is that it’s time to move on to a subject more to their liking.

Republicans in Wisconsin are playing right into the hands of the progressives by defending themselves against allegations that Scott Walker is trying to end collective bargaining and the right of public employees to organize unions. Instead of defending themselves, they should man up and make it clear that they do want to see an end to collective bargaining by public-employee unions in Wisconsin. They should make it clear that they do want to end the “right” of public employees to organize unions.

Why should public-sector unions be allowed to “collectively” bargain with public officials whom they can, in turn, support through massive campaign contributions? Every half-awake person know that it’s an incestuous and obscene relationship. More accurately, it’s out-and-out fraud perpetrated against the citizens who foot the bill for union pay increases and benefits, and it should be criminally prosecuted as such.

In a 2008 radio interview, Barack Obama said: ” … the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.” In that same interview, he went on to say that the Constitution “[says] what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf.”

That’s right, Barack, the Constitution did not venture into the issues of redistribution of wealth or political and economic justice, and did not say that the government was supposed to do anything on any individual’s behalf. Which means that the argument from the left is based on a false premise – that public-sector unions have a right to collectively bargain. They do not.

The fact is that groups do not have rights; only individuals have rights. Personally, I’d like to see an amendment to the Constitution that would emphasize every employer’s natural right to ban any and all union activity from his business.

Since a person’s business is his property, his right to do with it as he pleases (including banning unions) is already guaranteed by the Constitution. But, much like the Second Amendment, the purpose of a new amendment would be to underscore a specific liberty that every individual naturally possesses – in this case, the freedom of an owner to make whatever rules he chooses with regard to his business.

Progressives are not capable of comprehending the concept of liberty, but perhaps a rash of clearly worded amendments to the Constitution is what is needed to force them to behave themselves.