Nathan Newman wrote:
>And the history of the drop in support for unions in the public mind was
>not
>some gradual process. It was tied to the rightwing attack on unions by the
>McClellan Committee in 57 and 58, with pro-union sentiment dropping from
>76%
>before the hearings to just 50% afterwards. The destruction of union
>support with the rhetoric of "corruption" was a deliberate and successful
>campaign by the rightwing to destroy the union movement. You can argue
>that the failures of the labor movement left them open to the attack, but
>then you are accepting that the success of every other rightwing smear from
>McCarthyism to post-911 attacks on civil liberties won on its merits.
-Man, is this the kind of reasoning you get with a Berkeley PhD and a -Yale law degree? Nathan, that makes no sense at all.
Sure it does, you blame the success of the rightwing attack on unions on the failures of the unions themselves, not the skill of the attackers. So by the same logic, the success of the Patriot Act must be based on the guilt of those whose civil liberties are denied.
The alternative view is that the union corruption issue has been historically blown out of proportion to serve the ideological needs of the rightwing (and occasionally leftwing) critics of the union movement.
-- Nathan Newman