If you want to understand how daft the Left really is, consider this shrewd observation from Ed Morrissey:
The global economy still requires mass manufacturing, mining, construction, and other traditional labor-intensive tasks. However, globalization and the heavy cost of unions to business has pushed much of those activities out of the country, except for those industries tasked with deriving the natural resources from America. Organized labor will still play a part in those industries, but ironically, those are the industries most under fire from the politicians that get elected with union dollars: Democrats. Oil, coal, and gas extraction could create millions of new well-paying and union jobs, but the unions keep contributing to those politicians most likely to block the extraction and use of all three. That’s another reason why the unions are fast becoming an anachronism.
Emphasis mine. Think about it, since these boneheads won't: if the public-sector unions gave a damn about their brethren in private sector union, they wouldn't support the environmentalist Left candidates who spend their days gumming up the works. Instead, they are in an alliance with the Al Gores of the world, providing a variety of, ahem, inverse services that delay or deny permitting, exploration and implementation of energy extraction, to say nothing of siting and permitting of refineries and the like. Private sector unions standing in solidarity with their public sector brethren are being played for fools. Meanwhile the price of gas at the SuperAmerica down the street is $3.60 a gallon this afternoon. Remember when we heard people saying "drill, baby, drill?" Guess not.
And while all this is happening the young people of Madison are chanting "si se puede" in the Capitol building as they rally to the defense of clerks who favor their own sinecures over all else and cast their own appetites as intrinsic to the public good. And the young people, who will receive the bill for the continuing largesse our clerks demand, are doubling down on their behalf. Will these noble dunces chanting "si se puede" be paying a hell of a lot more money, and have a hell of a lot fewer choices over the conduct and range of options available for their adult lives, if they somehow manage to shout down Scott Walker? No cabe duda.
I believe the term Lenin used for such people was "useful idiots." I also believe the term is too charitable.
End rant. Further affiant sayeth not.
3 comments:
i had this similar arguement just yesterday morning with my local president.
he started getting very angry, blaming everything on NAFTA and the GOP, and said the dems were trying to bring good jobs back to CA that were enviro friendly, put workers first and blah, blah, blah...
he started yelling when i asked: but whose going to pay our wages when what few jobs are left leave for AZ and UT while we wait for your kool-aid fantasy to play out?
It's frustrating, but I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. They think they are standing up for justice and and are willing to put self-interest aside. I happen to think they are wrong, but it sure does irritate me when liberals tell me that I'm voting against my self-interest by supporting conservatives. "Damn straight I am. I'm not so pathetic that I'll set aside what is right in order to get a handout."
I get that, WBP -- in some respects I'm making the mirror image argument that the highly irritating Thomas Frank makes in his profoundly stupid book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?" (By the way, did that sentence contain enough adjectives?)
We know the difference, of course -- there's nothing inherently wrong with pursuing one's self-interest, so long as you are mindful of the interests of others.
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