I agree that “there is a world of difference between the muscular government of Sweden and that of Nazi Germany.”

Interestingly, after I posted my comment, I discovered that today is the 70th anniversary of the Hitler-Stalin pact. The leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or NSDAP), Adolf Hitler, agreed with the leader of international socialism, Josef Stalin, to conquer the countries that lay between them, with Hitler getting the western part and Stalin the eastern part.

Oh, I don’t know. Possibly China and Russia, to get you started? I doubt that the unions would give you any protection there.

Tsk, tsk, you can’t expect the anti-teacher crowd here to back anything up with FACTS.

Thank you for your temperate response.

I get annoyed at my union as well, but, as they say, the perfect is the enemy of the good. I’m grateful for many things unions do and have done: the 40 hour work week, decent pay and benefits for teachers (they were miserable before the NEA came along), and the notion that there are limits to the burdens our bosses can place on us.

Your remark about fearing statism is clarifying. However I would submit that there is a world of difference between the muscular government of Sweden and that of Nazi Germany, and that the former is, on balance, a boon to its citizens. It also seems to me that many American workers exist in de facto tyrannies: corporate workplaces wherein they are afraid to speak their minds, even if their safetly and well-being are at stake. Places where the psychological climate is one of fear. Places where they feel compelled to sacrifice family and personal time if they wish to remain employed and pay their mortgages and feed their families. Of course free marketeers will say, Look for a different employer. A glib response. In reality, especially in our outsourcing and declining economy, it’s very risky to go back out on to the job market. And often there are few humane employers to be found (I suspect many bosses want to be more humane, but in our Law of the Jungle globalized economy, maximum exploitation becomes the norm). I support more muscular government –of a socialistic variety –as a way of curbing the tyranny of the employers and the unfettered free market. (A muscular government of the fascistic variety just teams up with the bosses and beats down workers even more.) In the end, I think it’s good for the employers as well as the employees. Checks and balances are good things, as our dear Founding Fathers would argue.

I’m sorry you’ve been the victim of stereotyping here. Many of us who are critical of various aspects of public schools and unions don’t fall into your counter-stereotype. We don’t believe, “union member = hack, non-union member = noble capitalist warrior, etc. We know that Thunderbottom is wrong about a lot of places and Mike is right.

As a teacher, I have problems with my union. I don’t like their alliance with the ed schools to support our ridiculous (and pretty much country-wide) merit pay system: the more ed courses you take, the more you get paid. I get annoyed by the constant communications from them telling me to vote for whichever left Democrat is running in the coming election. And I’m pissed that they don’t push for meaningful discipline, including alternative placements for students who just aren’t interested in or aren’t cut out for academics.

Those who say there is no contradiction between socialism and fascism are thinking along a statist-individualist axis. Both fascism and socialism say that society, represented by the state, basically owns you. In a full-blown fascist or socialist state (and Sweden, etc. are capitalist/socialist hybrids), there are no limits to what the state can do, so if those who run the government say the health of society depends on getting rid of Jews or kulaks, it will be done.

so of course I’m going to.

You or my lying eyes?