Topic: Decline of the West
It’s one of the oldest tactics in the teachers’ unions’ arsenal: Criticize public education employees, their unions or the failing schools they run and you’re accused of launching an assault on “the children.” That’s the cry today in Wisconsin—a cry familiar to anyone who pays attention to the activities of organized labor in the public sector.
That “the children” are actually benefitting from Wisconsin teachers’ fat-bellied benefits package is an arguable point, to put it at the lowest. And finally, I think, people are beginning to realize the fraudulence of the unions’ tactic. Closing down Wisconsin’s public schools by calling in sick, i.e. by lying? Comparing the governor of their state to Hitler, Stalin, Mubarak? Posing as oppressed working-class stiffs when they in fact enjoy pay and benefits that are the envy of many in the private sector? “Unseemly” doesn’t begin to describe their behavior. "Childish" or perhaps "infantile" seem more appropriate.
And that’s why the unions are going to lose this fight. They remind many grownups of the temper tantrums thrown by little kids when they're told they can't have cookies before dinner.
