Wisconsin Commentary

I was going to construct a whimsical tale to illustrate the absurdity, but truth is stranger than fiction here. Besides, it's less sensational than just plain dirty.

There once lived a good, honest, noble people who desired to protect their natural rights. They wanted to protect their property, their lives, and their ability to pursue happiness. So, they pooled their money and established a government. It worked well. Everyone chipped in a portion of their earnings, and they built things that benefited everyone. They built courts for justice, and roads for transportation. Then, they hired teachers to educate their children. Generations grew old and died, and more teachers were hired and more roads were built using a portion of the money people had earned. Everyone's life, property, and ability to pursue happiness were protected.

Then, the public workers and teachers got together and asked for more money. The people's elected representatives said "OK, here's more money to build things we all need and educate our children." The teachers and workers were delighted. They wondered if they could get more money, so they asked again. The taxpayers...the people who employed these workers and teachers...said "fine, take more of our money for what you do because we think you are worth it." Then, the workers and teachers asked for benefits like pensions and health care and a whole bunch of things. And, the people still said "sure, you're doing a good job." Then, one day, when the public workers and teachers asked for even more money, the taxpayers said "I'm sorry, we simply can't afford to pay you more. We're out of money." Instead of trusting the testimony of the elected representatives, for some reason, the public workers and teachers didn't believe them. They really wanted that money. They even felt like it was their right to have the money that other people earned.

(While, of course, education has an actual value, the way society had been governed set the compensation of teachers not on merit, but on a scale of experience and education level. Other compensation, in the form of benefits, rested not on effective teaching, or experience, or education level, but ability to get together and threaten the public with lack of education altogether in the form of a strike. This would not have been conceivable a century earlier when local communities and parents handled education.)

So, all the public workers and teachers got together and formed a gang to take the taxpayer's money anyway. They called it a "union." The union was smaller in number than the taxpayers, but it was organized and determined. It spared no expense in time and effort to get that money. Because they caused such a ruckus and only asked for a little bit of money at a time, the taxpayers' representatives agreed to give them the money even though many people who were employing them with taxes said they couldn't afford it.

Since the union method worked, people were naturally attracted to unions. More unions were formed, and more money was asked for, and more money was confiscated from the taxpayers, and this became very lucrative for union members so even more people joined unions, and before long, half of the people in the population were part of a union, determined to pilfer as much money from the taxpaying people as possible.

When the taxpayers formed their own unions, the public worker and teacher unions, who had learned to be effective with the whole 'union' thing, demanded the privilege to gang up on the taxpayers' representatives so that they could confiscate as much money as possible against the consent of the taxpayers. They called this "collective bargaining," and it worked very well at confiscating property from neighbors against their consent and distributing it to union members.

A couple generations went by and soon hardly anyone could make much money unless they joined a union to gang up on the legislators who represented the taxpayers, who were growing smaller and smaller in number compared to the union members. Furthermore, the teachers, who liked the way unions confiscated property from other people for their own benefit using coercive means, somehow failed to educate the young people about the methods they were using to make a living. Consequently, a generation of young people grew up assuming the privilege of taking other people's money without their consent was a 'right,' like a right to one's property, life, and pursuit of happiness, instead of a privilege. At the same time, they were depriving taxpayers of their property and pursuit of happiness by using unions to gang up on representatives in order to confiscate other people's earnings.

The government that was created to protect property was now being used, on behalf of a minority, to confiscate it from the majority.

Then, another generation passed, and the government was bankrupt, because everyone knew you could make the best money for your effort if you were part of a union. And there wasn't any money left to afford any of the roads and bridges and things that benefited everyone (just the union members). So, the people paying for the public workers and teachers got together and said: "we really think it's fine that you take so much of our money, but we would prefer it if you didn't gang up on us and use coercive means to deprive us of our property without our consent."

Then, the union members stopped working and marched on the capital demanding their 'right' to confiscate other people's property and slept on the floor and engaged in other pathetic, desperate means to gain the sympathies of the population, reduced to bums and beggars.

And this is how a once good, honest, and noble people was reduced to a pitiful mob of loathsome, confused, angry knaves.

I just can't even stand it. I'm sorry. If they are educators and don't understand what is going on, they have no business teaching. If they know what's going on, how dare they set this example for their students. Yes, Wisconsin is a sedentary moose in a shallow pond that has been collecting leeches for decades. Killing off the moose isn't the objective here. If they were protesting for the survival of their families and livelihood, I could understand. COME ON PEOPLE. Taking away the legal privilege to gang up to confiscate the property of neighbors is not worth 5 minutes sleeping on a marble floor.

The only silver lining is that Wisconsin teachers are less dangerous at the capitol than in the classroom.