Whitaker's Current Articles

There is a lot of talk about the declining influence of "Labor" in American politics.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the case where a group I headed was on the ground fighting busing in Louisville. White working class children were lining up at five o'clock in the morning to be bused into the ghetto and come home in the freezing darkness. Like every judge I have ever heard of who ordered busing, the judge who ordered busing in Louisville had grandchildren in private schools. They were still in bed at 5.

So our ally in this battle was the biggest electrical workers' local in America. They were infuriated that busing was only practiced on their children.

The head of the national AFL-CIO called the Louisville union and told them that if they continued to protest busing, he would withdraw their charter. They folded instantly.

That is what "labor" means to the media: it means those who take liberal orders.

During the fight over campaign finance reform, the liberals and their pet conservative senator John McCain kept complaining about the "deal breaker" that could destroy the bill. This was a proposal that would force unions to get members' permission to hand out political money instead of union bosses handing out political money as they chose. This, said the media and McCain, was an "anti-labor" idea.

Most union dues are spent backing political causes. To the media, "Labor" is the group that hands that money out. It is the group that is pro-busing.

For McCain and the liberals who love him, the ideal "labor leadership" was in place in the Labor Party in Britain before Tony Blair took over the Party. Back then, at Labor Party conventions, whoever owned the union cast all his member's votes for them.

So who owns the unions? Often organized crime does. Organized labor is one of its staple sources of income. The point here is not that labor is still controlled by organized crime. The point is that the so-called "labor leaders" can be puppets on a string and the media will still refer to them as "labor."

"Labor" has no use whatsoever for the opinion of a bunch of working stiffs. They are straight liberal, and supporting the political left is their only real purpose. Like all large organizations, they do as little for their clients, in this case working people, as they can. They have other priorities.

As always, the capitalized word is nothing like the real thing. When the media speak of Labor, this has little to do with labor. When the Inquisition spoke of Mercy, it meant the opposite of mere mercy, which meant not torturing people. To the Inquisition, True Mercy was saving the soul from Hell. That required a slow burning at the stake. That gave the sinner a chance to feel the fire and repent. That was Mercy. There was no room for mercy.

Think about it. If Mercy meant mercy, you wouldn't capitalize it. If Labor meant labor, you wouldn't capitalize it, but Labor is implicitly capitalized in Mediaspeak.

Yes, Labor is taking a beating in the political arena today. But that is doing labor a lot of good.

Back in the old days, the labor vote, (note the small "l"), was one of the bases of Democratic strength. The other base was the Solid South, which guaranteed the Democrats its electoral votes. As liberal ideologues took over the Party, those bases of Democratic strength went away.

Now the Democrats depend on the slavish loyalty of minorities. Minority votes are increasing by leaps and bounds.

Democrats have lost their hold on labor, (small l). Sixty percent of Northern union people still vote Democratic, but Labor does not have the control over them that it used to have.

The Solid Republican South has kept the Democrats out of the White House for twenty-four of the last thirty-six years. Chris Matthews actually repeated a point I have made repeatedly in WhitakerOnline: The last time a Democrat who was not from the Old Confederacy won the White House was John Kennedy in 1960.

No Northern Democrat has occupied the White House since November 22, 1963.

Now the Democrats seem to be about to nominate another Massachusetts liberal, John Kerry.

The Democrats keep doing that. They had Dukakis and Mondale and they got trounced, but they keep nominating liberals from the far North.

After nominating another Northern Democrat and getting trounced, the Democrats ask themselves, "What were we THINKING?"

Well, I was wrong when I said that, based on history, Dean had the Democratic nomination sewed up. So maybe a Massachusetts Democrat will win this time.

I doubt it, though.