Others may follow Wisconsin’s law

When Communism was still on the rise during the 1960s, the United States was concerned that nonaligned nations in Asia would capitulate to the Soviet Union, strengthening its hold on the world. This led to the coinage of the phrase “the Domino Principle,” suggesting that as one nation fell, its neighbors would follow. And that led to our decision to wage war in Vietnam, a quagmire that consumed the lifeblood of this country in a hegemonic contest between competing superpowers.

Now Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his Republican Senate colleagues, by utilizing their contrived nuclear option to pass legislation to remove the right of public unions to collectively bargain, may have resurrected this call to war in 1965, but in another form that now may succeed. Since Republican governors make up the majority of governorships in America, Mr. Walker will assuredly be emulated in other states.

The United States lost the war in Vietnam when we abandoned our good conscience to embrace xenophobic hubris. The United States will lose again when the labor movement, the core of America’s greatness, becomes the victim of our reckless desertion of principle.

James D. Cook

Streamwood