Unions stifle workers, restrict freedom

Every once in a while the Herald shows its true colors. The March 31 Fence Post carried not one but two liberal diatribes condemning Wisconsin Gov. Walker: “Gov. Walker hitting the wrong target” by Anthony Nelson and “Others may follow Wisconsin’s law” by James D. Cook.

Nelson conjures up Mussolini and rails against millionaires who he believes would solve all our problems if they were just taxed “at anything like the level they should be.” Cook reincarnates the old “domino principle” to predict the demise of the labor movement as a slew of Republican governors follow Walker’s and New Jersey Gov. Christie’s lead. In Cook’s words, unions are “the core of America’s greatness.”

Freedom is the core of our greatness. Freedom gives us the ability to create wealth like no other nation in history. Unions, while needed to unshackle 12-year-olds from seven 12-hour days a week, have long outlived their usefulness. Union crybabies now shackle talented people to highly structured jobs with immobility to realize their best potentials. They lure them to stay in highly paid, benefit-rich jobs on a road to lucrative couch-potato pensions while killing their creative drives for the rest of their lives. Good people are afraid to take risks to leave their stifling union job for “security purposes,” sentencing themselves to watch the clock to hurry the day.

Grow up, union teachers, firemen, policemen, and all union workers. Think better of yourselves than to succumb to mediocrity for security’s sake. This is America, not Russia, Libya, Iran or China.

Dave Souders

Arlington Heights