Crossposted at the Young Sentinel
About a week ago during a discussion I participated in on the Young Sentinel blog having to do with education the eponymous author replied to a point I made about teachers unions by saying that “Another thing: teacher’s unions (and unions in general) are a good thing for the country. We need to return to a national psyche when unions are appreciated for the good work that they do.” Coming from someone who regularly condemns corporations for being “greedy” and “only caring about their own profits” this puzzled me somewhat (not that I’m picking on the YS mind you, his attitude is just representative of many liberals.)
After all, what truly separates a corporation from a union? Both are groups of people who come together to more efficiently sell a commodity and to make the maximum amount of money possible in doing so; one group sells a product or products, while the other sells its labor. The important part is that (in theory at least; random philanthropy notwithstanding) both are essentially selfish institutions, dedicated to enriching their members at the expense of the greater society.
It is true that after 8 years of Republican rule our governments and laws have become biased towards corporations, but as oppositions are wont to do the Democrats/liberals have overcompensated, casting corporations in general as the Great Satan who exist only to greedily take the money of the common people. This mindset has spread across the country to the degree that even the Republicans are championing their VP choice’s anti-corporate credentials, with much being made of the fact that her husband is a union worker, and Karl Rove himself going so far as to call her “populist”.
