Readers of my blog, especially those who comment frequently, know my good friend Jon. He's a recent convert to the left and believes in it passionately. A common theme of his world view, and those on the left in general, is the tug of war between the rich and the poor. The powerful and the non-powerful. The politically connected and the those with no political power. Basically the heart of leftist's worldview revolves around this paradigm.
Every political fight, every economic decision and every current event is filtered through this prism. Since I consider Jon a smart, honest and sincere person, I have been trying to understand how he could be so enthralled by such a political philosophy. I try to read, watch and listen to everything he asks me to. And a big part of that is Chomsky and his writings. So I go over to Chomsky's site and this is the latest article of his, on the Winsconsin union political fight:
As working people won basic rights in the 1930s, business leaders warned of "the hazard facing industrialists in the rising political power of the masses," and called for urgent measures to beat back the threat, according to scholar Alex Carey in "Taking the Risk Out of Democracy." They understood as well as Mubarak did that unions are a leading force in advancing rights and democracy. In the U.S., unions are the primary counterforce to corporate tyranny.
By now, U.S. private-sector unions have been severely weakened. Public-sector unions have recently come under sharp attack from right-wing opponents who cynically exploit the economic crisis caused primarily by the finance industry and its associates in government.
Popular anger must be diverted from the agents of the financial crisis, who are profiting from it; for example, Goldman Sachs, "on track to pay out $17.5 billion in compensation for last year," the business press reports, with CEO Lloyd Blankfein receiving a $12.6 million bonus while his base salary more than triples to $2 million.
Instead, propaganda must blame teachers and other public-sector workers with their fat salaries and exorbitant pensions -- all a fabrication, on a model that is all too familiar. To Wisconsin's Gov. Scott Walker, to other Republicans and many Democrats, the slogan is that austerity must be shared -- with some notable exceptions.
The propaganda has been fairly effective. Walker can count on at least a large minority to support his brazen effort to destroy the unions. Invoking the deficit as an excuse is pure farce.
In different ways, the fate of democracy is at stake in Madison, Wis., no less than it is in Tahrir Square.
Lost on Chomsky, and which bears no mention in this article or other writings, is an investigation into whether or not the claims of opponents of teachers unions are actually true. This is typical Chomsky. He doesn't care about declared motives. There has to be other reasons, and those reasons have to fit into a powerful vs nonpower paradigm. Anything else is not even worth investigating.
Ignored by Chomsky then is the long trail of writings and arguments that opponents of teachers unions have been making. Opponents of teachers unions make the claim (among others) that the teachers union stifles reform and entrenches a low quality public education system. One that ultimately harms the poor most, especially minorities.
The proof of this is so one sided that even traditional supporters of unions have a hard time making a compelling case in their defense and instead resort to distortions and misleading claims (see here for an example). But where is Chomsky on this issue? Nowhere. He is so blinded by his worldview, that anything contrary to union power is ipso facto a power grab against the 'poor and powerless' in favor of the 'rich and powerful'.
I bet you can read all of Chomsky's material, all of his writings, videos and historical accounts and you will not find anything on say, the unions role in entrenching racism (pdf), or vast corruption throughout history, or more currently, the teachers unions negative affect on public education - his is a simple storyline, unions and 'workers' are good, rich people are evil.
This is typical of Chomsky and leftist in general. Their simplistic paradigm is so ingrained in them that they often cannot see the forest for the trees, and miss the fact that it is the students and poor minorities in particular, who are the powerless in need of defending, and it is the teachers unions and their political allies that are the powerful. (Originally published: 5/7/2011)
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