The American Political Divide...Individuals vs the State

In an audaciously muscular political move, Michigan Republicans in one day reached a goal that seemed an all-but-impossible dream: making the labor stronghold of Michigan a right-to-work state. With majorities in both the Michigan House and Senate, and backing from Gov. Rick Snyder to push through legislation in both the House and Senate on Thursday, state Republican lawmakers ignored denunciations and walkouts by helpless Democrats and cries of outrage from union activists who swarmed the state Capitol hallways and grounds. At one point, police used pepper spray to subdue demonstrators who tried to force their way into the Senate chamber. Indiana, Wisconsin and now Michigan, - all bastions of the early 20th century union movement in states which were then centers of heavy manufacturing industries such as steel and autos - have all now produced activist Republican majorities that have dealt unions one body blow after another. Nationwide, the right-to-work laws, as they are called, exist in 23 states, many of these in the southeast, where the modern right-to-work movement began in the 1970s, creating a push for heavy manufacturing and other traditionally unionized industries to move south in order to avoid the forced unionization of their workforces. Next Tuesday, when the Michigan state House and Senate vote on each other's bills, which would prohibit making payment of union fees a condition of employment, Michigan will almost certainly become the 24th state with right-to-work laws. The United Auto Workers union president, who was in the protest crowd, said the bills' passage was "a very partisan, polarizing attack." President Barack Obama continues to oppose right-to-work laws. A White House spokesman said after the Michigan vote that the President believes the revival of the US automobile industry "is a prime example of how unions have helped build a strong middle class and a strong American economy." ~~~~~ Dear readers, this may seem like a relatively local topic for my blog, but it is one of the faces of the profound philosophical Divide that separates America into two uncompromising political camps. The Divide is separated by the word RIGHT - right to work, right to life, right to controlled immigration, right to traditional Christian-based family values, right to small non-intrusive government, right to individual liberty, right to free markets, right to a balanced budget, right to a reduction in the national debt. These are the rights held as sacred under the US Constitution by American conservatives, who are organized under the Republican Party umbrella as old-line GOPers, tea partiers and libertarians. They are convinced that the other side of the Divide is inhabited by a Democrat Party that adheres to European socialist principles leading to big government tax-and-spend policies that are certain to destroy individual liberty and traditional values, by championing uncontrolled spending on welfare and social programs, cemented by extensive government regulation of all aspects of life, that will tax free markets out of existence and destroy the US Constitution by ignoring it. This is why the fiscal cliff negotiations in Washington are likely to produce almost nothing. There is no way to close the Divide. One side or the other must finally win the argument and define America's future. But, until then, be prepared for more and more deeply partisan arguments that may seem out of proportion to the topic at hand. But it is not each topic that matters. It is the vision for the future of America underlying each topic that counts. Compromise on anything - from right to work laws to fiscal cliffs - is seen as losing one more step down the slippery slope into philosophical oblivion. America is in a Second Revolutionary War over its political vision. The battles will be fierce and unbending. And for me, it is imperative that the Republican philosophy prevail if the United States created by the Constitution is to survive. The world does not need another Europe. It does need an America that defends individual human beings and their inalienable rights.