Dennis, I think you're psychic. More I will not say in a blog comment lest I overwater the truth and prevent the development of mythology.

To deal with public workers on strike, we need Trajan, or Truman, or Reagan.

I don't know enough about the history of unions to know if they were relevant at one time. Yes, I know what public schools say, but hey, they're a union shop. For instance schools never tell you it takes a government to make a monopoly.

I KNOW at this point unions are the enemy of a better economy and a better education and, for that matter, better mail service. And I like your union, Dennis. I joined sometime ago and still liking it.

OTOH, telling union workers picketing grocery stores (as they're threatening to do again in my state) "I'm sorry, unions are against my religion" gets some very interesting looks.

IMHO unions do start out with good intentions (cliche intended) ... collective bargaining with management needs some sort of organized group and free associations of people is a Constitutional guarantee. But then the unions become 800 lb political gorrillas ... no more evident than the California Teachers Association which as done more to destroy the California public school system than any crack-pot "religious wingnut" they shake their finger at. The last time we tried even a mild voucher system limited only to low income families the CTA tossed $12 million dollars of union money into the successful effort to defeat it ... ads talking about Satan schools, etc.

And CA public schools themselves are so leftist politicized kids may have a hard time reading but will know the US military in Iraq are "Baby Killers"

I salute that Flag. God [and all Gods and Goddesses] bless America.

HAIL TO THE ROMAN EMPIRE!!!! HAIL TO THE TRAJAN EMPIRE!!!! Trajan was right. Call me a reactionary. I'm totally against government-employee unions. They have never been allowed in the first place. All they do is bloat government and the coffers of the Democratic party. And the teachers' unions, the NEA in particular, are the worst of all, indoctrinating the young with Communist propaganda instead of doing what they were hired to do by the parents who pay the taxes.

I must say, though, that not all teachers in public schools are Communists. Not back in my day anyway. We had teachers who were "squarely" anti-Communist.

I have long supported labor unions in the private, free enterprise, sector on grounds of freedom of association, which employers also exercise when they form corporations. I have also long noted that labor unions, or their members, have actually been more anti-Communist than have many businesses. George Meany was "squarely" anti-Communist, as was his successor Lane Kirkland, who aided Lech Walesa's Polish Solidarity movement in overthrowing the Communists. It was "pragmatic" businessmen like David Rockefeller, Averell Harriman, and Armand Hammer who pushed for "detente" and trade with the Communists, while longshoremen protested by refusing to load wheat on ships bound for Russia, as they later, during the hostage crisis of 1979, refused to load wheat on ships bound for Iran.

Blue-collar workers have long been among the most patriotic and conservative elements in this country. I know, I know, that's totally contrary to Marx's theory, which was that "the proletariat" were to be the "vanguards of the revolution" and the capitalists its enemies. Labor unions in America did strongly support the New Deal, Fair Deal, etc., but they never went in for the overtly Socialist and Communist paries here to the degree that they have in Europe. That has been a continuing source of disappointment for the American Left, which, in the late 1960s and early 1070s, became the New Left, turning instead for support to radicalized college students, militant black separatists, radical feminists, alienated homosexuals, and sundry other disaffected elements, and, especially, the "Third World". The American blue-collar worker or "hard hat" is despised as an "Archie Bunker", who in turn, despises "limousine liberals" and "effete elites".

Around and around it goes. Where it stops nobody knows....