I thought Labor day was a good day to contrast the unrealistic Marxist redistributive Socialist utopian dream against the simple well proven truth of American Conservatism.
The first Labor Day was founded by the Central Labor Union in New York city on September 5, 1882.
Leftists wanted May 1st but president Grover Cleveland and Congress opted to choose the date of the original Labor Day parade organized by the CLU, September 5, 1884, rather than May 1, as a national holiday. Thus, the first Monday of September became Labor Day and was officially written into law as a national holiday on June 28, 1894.
" But the last holiday of summer is more than a day off work: It's also one of the most controversial of American holidays, a celebration of the laborers -- and more specifically, the unionized laborers"
a quote from Bruce Watson
So it is obvious that the Left uses Labor Day as another day to promote their Marxist redistributive agenda. The rest of us need to counter this false unsustainable utopian dream that has been proven time and time again to be a complete failure that ends up making many suffer worse then before.
"What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the
politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a
democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in
which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the
state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes
deserve it – has gone bust. The crash of 2008 exposed a devastating truth
that went much deeper than the discovery of a generation of delinquent
bankers, or a transitory property bubble. It has become apparent to anyone
with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce
enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programmes which
the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect. The fantasy
may be sustained for a while by the relentless production of phoney money to
fund benefits and job-creation projects, until the economy is turned into a
meaningless internal recycling mechanism in the style of the old Soviet
Union."
a quote from
Janet Daley
"We own this country politicians are employees of ours and when somebody does not do the job, we’ve got to let them go!" Clint Eastwood
On the Internet, there is a cry for replacing this year’s Labor Day – as in American workers’ day – with “Empty Chair Day” inspired by Clint Eastwood’s ‘empty chair’ symbolizing the current employment - or should it be said, unemployment - situation in the country.
I feel Labor Day should now be celebrated as Empty Chair Day! Please do join me in celebrating "National Empty Chair Day" on Labor Day!.
Below is another excellent article from
Real Clear Politics
By Robert Tracinski
The
Democratic lawmakers who have gone on the lam in Wisconsin and
Indiana-and who knows where else next-are exhibiting a literal
fight-or-flight response, the reaction of an animal facing a threat to
its very existence.
Why? Because it is a threat to their existence. The battle of
Wisconsin is about the viability of the Democratic Party, and more: it
is about the viability of the basic social ideal of the left.
It is a matter of survival for Democrats in an immediate, practical sense. As Michael Barone
explains, the government employees' unions are a mechanism for siphoning taxpayer dollars into the campaigns of Democratic politicians.
But there is something deeper here than just favor-selling and
vote-buying. There is something that almost amounts to a twisted
idealism in the Democrats' crusade. They are fighting, not just to
preserve their special privileges, but to preserve a social ideal. Or
rather, they are fighting to maintain the
illusion that their ideal system is benevolent and sustainable.
Unionized public-sector employment is the distilled essence of the
left's moral ideal. No one has to worry about making a profit. Generous
health-care and retirement benefits are provided to everyone by the
government. Comfortable pay is mandated by legislative fiat. The work
rules are militantly egalitarian: pay, promotion, and job security are
almost totally independent of actual job performance. And because
everyone works for the government, they never have to worry that their
employer will go out of business.
In short, public employment is an idealized socialist economy in
miniature, including its political aspect: the grateful recipients of
government largesse provide money and organizational support to re-elect
the politicians who shower them with all of these benefits.
Put it all together, and you have the Democrats' version of utopia.
In the larger American culture of Tea Parties, bond vigilantes, and
rugged individualists, Democrats feel they are constantly on the
defensive. But within the little subculture of unionized government
employees, all is right with the world, and everything seems to work the
way it is supposed to.
This cozy little world has been described as a system that grants
special privileges to a few, which is particularly rankling in the
current stagnant economy, when private sector workers acutely feel the
difference. But I think this misses the point. The point is that this is
how the left thinks
everyone should live and work. It is their version of a model society.
Every political movement needs models. It needs a real-world example to demonstrate how its ideal works and that it works.
And there's the rub. The left is running low on utopias.
The failure of Communism-and the spectacular success of capitalism,
particularly in bringing wealth to what used to be called the "Third
World"-deprived the left of one utopia. So they fell back on the
European welfare state, smugly assuring Americans that we would be so
much better off if we were more like our cousins across the Atlantic.
But the Great Recession has triggered a sovereign debt crisis across
Europe. It turned out that the continent's welfare states were borrowing
money to paper over the fact that they have committed themselves to
benefits more generous than they can ever hope to pay for.
In America, the ideological crisis of the left is taking a slightly
different form. Here, the left has set up its utopias by carving out,
within a wider capitalist culture, little islands where its ideals hold
sway. Old age is one of those islands, where everyone has been promised
the socialist dreams of a guaranteed income and unlimited free health
care. Public employment is another.
Now the left is panicking as these experiments in American socialism implode.
On the national level, it has become clear that the old-age welfare
state of Social Security and Medicare is driving the federal government
into permanent trillion-dollar deficits and a ruinous debt load. Even
President Obama acknowledged, in his State of the Union address, that
these programs are the real drivers of runaway debt-just before he
refused to consider any changes to them. You see how hard it is for the
Democrats to give up on their utopias.
On the state level, public employment promises the full socialist
ideal to a small minority-paid for with tax money looted from a larger,
productive private economy. But the socialist utopia of public
employment has crossed the Thatcher Line: the point at which, as the
Iron Lady used to warn, you run out of other people's money.
The current crisis exposes more than just the financial
unsustainability of these programs. It exposes their moral
unsustainability. It exposes the fact that the generosity of these
welfare-state enclaves can only be sustained by forcing everyone else to
perform forced labor to pay for the benefits of a privileged few.
This is why the left is treating any attempt to fundamentally reform
the public workers' paradise as an existential crisis. This is why they
are reacting with the most extreme measures short of outright
insurrection. When Democratic lawmakers flee the state in order to
deprive their legislatures of the quorum necessary to vote, they are
declaring that they would rather
have no legislature than allow voting on any bill that would break the power of the unions.
National Review's Jim Geraghty describes these legislative walk-outs
as "small-scale, temporary secessions." The analogy is exact. One
hundred and fifty years ago, Southern slaveholders realized that the
political balance of the nation had tipped against them, that they could
no longer hope to win the political argument for their system. Faced
with a federal government in which they were out-voted, they decided
that they would rather have no federal government at all. The Democrats'
current cause may not be as repugnant-holding human beings as chattel
is a unique evil-but it has something of the same character of
irrational, belligerent denial. More than two decades after the fall of
the Berlin Wall, the left is still trying to pretend that socialism is
plausible as an economic system.
The Democrats are fleeing from a lot more than their jobs as state
legislators. They are fleeing from the cold, hard reality of the
financial and moral unsustainability of their ideal.
Below is another excellent article from
The failure of unions and socialism
from Braincrave Second Life staff
Mar 02, 2011
Someone once made a comment that he was 100% supportive of a tyrannical, socialist government as long as he was the only citizen of his country (paraphrased). Throughout the world, and especially in America, many are still trying their best to pretend that socialism is a plausible economic system and ideology by attaching it to capitalism. No matter how often socialism has proved to be morally and economically destructive, there continues to be those who desperately want to believe that "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a sustainable model.
Currently, there are multiple US states (e.g., Wisconsin, Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, Nevada, New Jersey, Florida) that are attempting to "break" public unions. This struggle appears to be bringing those on the left together. Why are public unions such a particularly big deal for Democrats? Is unionized, public employment representative of the socialist utopia? Given what we are seeing with government's income statement - and specifically the cost of entitlement programs which is primary to liberal ideology - is it hubris to suggest that breaking the public unions would effectively destroy the fundamental premises of the Democratic party and, thus, the party itself? Given that Republicans are just as guilty for supporting collectivism, how destructive could this be to RINOs?
FTA: "The Democratic lawmakers who have gone on the lam in Wisconsin and Indiana-and who knows where else next-are exhibiting a literal fight-or-flight response, the reaction of an animal facing a threat to its very existence. Why? Because it is a threat to their existence. The battle of Wisconsin is about the viability of the Democratic Party, and more: it is about the viability of the basic social ideal of the left... They are fighting, not just to preserve their special privileges, but to preserve a social ideal. Or rather, they are fighting to maintain the illusion that their ideal system is benevolent and sustainable. Unionized public-sector employment is the distilled essence of the left's moral ideal. No one has to worry about making a profit. Generous health-care and retirement benefits are provided to everyone by the government. Comfortable pay is mandated by legislative fiat. The work rules are militantly egalitarian: pay, promotion, and job security are almost totally independent of actual job performance. And because everyone works for the government, they never have to worry that their employer will go out of business...
The point is that this is how the left thinks everyone should live and work. It is their version of a model society. Every political movement needs models. It needs a real-world example to demonstrate how its ideal works and that it works. And there's the rub. The left is running low on utopias. The failure of Communism-and the spectacular success of capitalism, particularly in bringing wealth to what used to be called the "Third World"-deprived the left of one utopia. So they fell back on the European welfare state, smugly assuring Americans that we would be so much better off if we were more like our cousins across the Atlantic. But the Great Recession has triggered a sovereign debt crisis across Europe. It turned out that the continent's welfare states were borrowing money to paper over the fact that they have committed themselves to benefits more generous than they can ever hope to pay for.
In America, the ideological crisis of the left is taking a slightly different form. Here, the left has set up its utopias by carving out, within a wider capitalist culture, little islands where its ideals hold sway. Old age is one of those islands, where everyone has been promised the socialist dreams of a guaranteed income and unlimited free health care. Public employment is another. Now the left is panicking as these experiments in American socialism implode... The current crisis exposes more than just the financial unsustainability of these programs. It exposes their moral unsustainability. It exposes the fact that the generosity of these welfare-state enclaves can only be sustained by forcing everyone else to perform forced labor to pay for the benefits of a privileged few."
