Yes indeed. In fact, not only did the left "run up against" the Puritan work ethic, it turned it upside down. Pride in one's work was abandoned -- via propaganda and rabble-rousing -- for a posture of victimization and hopelessness. Self-reliance was mutated into dependence and a sense of entitlement.

Next to the New Deal, nothing has been more antithetical to the American idea than the rise of "organized labor." The effects of unionism have been devastating:

-- It was probably the first major movement to instill a victim mentality among a large group of Americans.

-- It corrupted the values of individualism and self-responsibility that had once defined the country's spirit.

-- It led to some of the worst legislative plundering of freedom the country has endured. In one fell swoop, the National Labor Relations Act stripped rights from one arbitrarily defined group of Americans ("employers") while assigning special privileges to another ("employees"). By mandating collective bargaining and restricting employers' rights of association, it gave legal sanction to conspiracy and racketeering.

Those are just the tangible results. More important are the effects that aren't as visible: namely, that unionism helped ignite the devastating philosophical transition that continues to plague the country, with freedom and liberty replaced by "equality" as America's most cherished ideal.

It is outrageous for anyone to blame what is happening in America today on unions. They are only the type of voluntary associations for mutual benefit which Tocqueville praised effusively. When business started to exploit the workers in the late 19th century and during the Depression, should workers have been forbidden from associating to protect their interests? Had they been forbidden, the Bolsheviks would have long since taken over.

Are there excesses from organized labor? Of course. The construction industry is a disgrace, with its artificially high labor costs maintained by 'prevailing wage legislation.' Father/son unions are an abomination, creating artificial barriers to entry for potential workers, and only exacerbating racial tensions.

The NLRA saved this country from going soviet or becoming like Europe, with its voluminous regulations, confiscatory taxation, and huge impediments to free enterprise. There was no fiercer anti-Communism than in the AFL-CIO, a vivid contrast to British and especially French or Italian labor unions.

Bart,

Of course unions have a right to exist -- as voluntary organizations. If some people want to get together and call themselves "a labor union," that's no different from my grandma and her friends getting together each week and calling themselves "a bridge club."

The most significant problem, though, comes with the special privileges that have been legislated for this one particular type of get-together. If workers form a group and decide to strike, that's certainly their right. It's also the right of their employer (or should be, at any rate) to decline to further associate with them. Nobody should be compelled by law to associate with those whom they wish not to associate. But that's what labor law does: it strips rights from some in the name of empowering others.

THAT IS NOT HOW AMERICA IS SUPPOSED TO WORK.
What you are advocating is essentially socialism -- an attempt to choreograph and manipulate things, including freedom, in the name of achieving some "better" existence as arbitrarily envisioned by you.

As I noted in my first post, the rhetoric of unionism has convinced generations of Americans that they are victims and not responsible for themselves. This line of argument has done more to damage the concept of individualism than perhaps any other rhetoric in American history. That this rhetoric was then enshrined into law only compounded the problem.

You ask, "... should workers have been forbidden from associating to protect their interests?" No, of course not. They should not have been forbidden from associating, nor should they be.

But I'll ask you whether businessmen should be forbidden from associating to protect their interests. As it stands, the law largely does forbid such associating.

So much for freedom and the blind eye of the law.

Incidentally, until you can round up evidence that any "worker" had a gun to his head, I'll dismiss your notion of "workers" being "exploited" by businesses. The only workers in American history ever genuinely exploited were slaves. And we took care of that bit of freedom-raping back in the 1860s.

Think I'll get me and go munch on some grapes of wrath....

In the private sector you can fire all striking workers, and replace them at your leisure. Nothing stops a group of businesses from collectivizing their hiring decisions.

The misdeeds of Big Business in the 1860-1940 period really were outrageous. They used labor surpluses and the absence of any welfare state protections to exploit the workers mercilessly. The historical record is quite clear as any of about 1000 contemporary sources like Jacob Riis, Lincoln Steffens and Upton Sinclair can tell you. Progressivism and Debs-style moderate socialism didn't arise in a vacuum. If you want pure numbers you can look at median wages over the period, which were less than $500 per family in 1900. The workers organized to counteract this. Just as government was used by business to impose its will on the workers, labor sought to impose its will on the business community through government action. Currently, we are at a confused muddled median where some workers are privileged and others are exploited, but market imperfections will always exist.

Starving workers and families, which we certainly had lots of in the period you seem to revere, will not accept their plight for long when they see that their bosses live lives of luxury. Had we followed your perscription we would have had a full-scale workers' revolt and who knows how that would have shaken out. All I know is that it would have been worse than what we have.

It's not about disparity of wealth. Hell, Bill Gates earns at least 10,000 times what I do and I have a decent life to say the least. No shortage of Moet and lobster at Bart's household. But when the vast bulk of a population lives on a subsistence level and a narrow coterie live lives of Oriental splendor, it is a recipe for social disaster.

Our labor movement for all its ills played a pivotal role in keeping us as a nation from seductive collectivist ideologies like Communism and Fascism and you ought to display some appreciation and gratitude for that.

Bart:

It's not the unions fault--Reagan put them out of our misery twenty years ago.

In the private sector you can fire all striking workers ...

It's not that cut-and-dried. Labor law contains various provisions that hinge on the nature of the strike (whether it's about pay increases, for instance, or about the old nebulous "unfair labor practices" schtick).

Again, my problem with unionism as it exists is two-fold:

(1) The law. It's not the government's business to get involved in private associations between invididuals, except upon the request of an individual seeking to enforce or mediate an existing contract via the courts. The government should grant no special privileges to businesses; it should grant no special privileges to workers. Period. That's not an appropriate role for government in a free society.

Government doesn't tell me who I can be friends with, or what music I can enjoy. There, my freedom is intact. Government doesn't quantify what "friendships" are, or codify what "music enjoyment" is.

In the field of labor, however, the federal government HAS quantified and codified. It has chosen to identify and define a particular set of relations between individuals, and then manipulate it. That's where the whole "arbitrary" thing comes in.

Look, free means free. It doesn't mean, "Well, it's OK to tinker with the freedom of American B because American C isn't happy with the job he got offered by American B."

If a business chooses to sign a contract with a group of its employees, that's fine. What's not fine is that the NLRA requires that upon the expiration of such a contract, the employer is dictated by law to negotiate another one with the same group. The negotations are MANDATED. That's "freedom"?

In some states, individuals remain free to voluntarily make employment agreements among themselves. But the fact that such places are called "right to work states" -- that they have to actively spell out this right -- reveals in a stark and disturbing way how this natural right has been compromised elsewhere.

(2) The cultural repercussions. As I've said, the propaganda and rhetoric of unionism is based on a corruption of American ideals. Seductive words such as "freedom" and "rights" have been distorted and misused by organizers, for whom those words actually translate to entitlement and immunity. Meanwhile, labor's other pet words -- such as "solidarity" and "brotherhood" -- don't even belong in the vocabulary of individual liberty.

Frankly, I'm baffled by your assertions that the "labor movement" helped save us from communism and fascism, when the very heart of union rhetoric is based on collectivist orthodoxy, conformism and groupthink. You don't have to hunt very hard to find the core labor manifestos, which don't even try to hide their nods to Marxism and other socialist flavors. "To each according to his needs" is the nut of the "labor movement."

That sort of dogma stands in stark opposition to individual liberty and freedom.

It very well may be true that some workers in the 19th century were unhappy with the "misdeeds of big business." (Your capitalizing of "Big Business," by the way, is another rhetorical trick.) If so, America already had a solution in place: that whole "life, liberty, pursuit of happiness" deal. Back in the freedom days, every transaction between an employer and employee was voluntary. Both had freedom: an unsatisfied employee was free to end his association with the employer, and an unsatisfied employer was free to end his association with the employee.

I know it's a well-worn cliche, but it's well-worn because it's so patently obvious: IF YOU DON'T LIKE YOUR JOB, QUIT.

You talk about the onetime threat of "revolts" and "workers' plights" and other such scary sounding hyperbole. But the only reasonable response to that is so what? We have (or had) a free market. Any "revolt" would be no different from consumers choosing not to spend on cans of Coke priced at $14. Coca-Cola would adjust accordingly, and find the appropriate place between supply, demand and price.

Union organizers like to speak about the "power of the people," when in fact their unspoken stance is that "the people" are dumb, helpless sheep at the mercy of others. That notion has infiltrated the public consciousness to a dismaying degree. And as I said up top, it has helped lead the abuse of democracy as a tool to erode freedom.