It’s too early to tell.
-Attributed in various phrasings to sometime Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (1898-1976), when asked sometime after 1949 about the impact of the French Revolution of 1789.
Ils n'ont rien appris, ni rien oublié
(They have learned nothing and they have forgotten nothing)
-Attr. to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, sometime Bishop of Autun and Foreign Minister of France under the First Empire and the Restoration, spoken of the Bourbon dynasty.
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
-Abraham Lincoln, First Message to Congress on the State of the Union, December 3, 1861
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
-Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861
The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.... We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
-Abraham Lincoln, Second Message to Congress on the State of the Union, December 1, 1862
To put it mildly, “things are happening” in the American Midwest that may well determine the future of organized labor throughout the United States.
In Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana, Republican governors are locked in battle with public sector workers and their unions. While the ostensible issue is the existence of budget deficits in each of the three states, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker spilled the beans yesterday by acknowledging in effect that the larger agenda he and several of his fellow GOP governors are pursuing is to use their states’ fiscal woes (real or contrived) as a vehicle for destroying their public sector unions. Whether Wisconsin’s Walker, Ohio’s Kasich, or Indiana’s Daniels will be able to push such agenda to the conclusions they desire is still an open question. As Zhou Enlai might have put it, it’s far too early to tell.
Unfortunately, it does appear that the Governor of Wisconsin, at least, has learned nothing and forgotten nothing when it comes to trying to crush the protesters who have inconvenienced him and his supporters. While we may chuckle with amusement at the fact that Gov. Walker got “punk’d” by a liberal blogger from Buffalo, we should be anything but amused by the governor’s acknowledgment that he and his staff had apparently given serious consideration to the use of agents provocateurs in an effort to stir up trouble and, presumably, provide justification for some sort of muscular intervention by either the local police or by the Wisconsin National Guard. Does Mr. Walker truly desire a repetition of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago?
Certainly, that appears to be the position of some on the more unreconstructed right. Yesterday, Jeff Cox, a deputy Indiana Attorney General, was fired after tweeting that the demonstrators were “political enemies” and “thugs,” and that he advocated using “deadly force” against them. Not surprisingly, Cox is now being lionized as a martyr by some who seem to share his views and who have a large soapbox from which to promulgate them.
When public officials contemplate the use of deliberate provocation to trigger unrest or violence, and when other public officials advocate the use of deadly force against peaceful protesters, something is deeply wrong. Now is the time for those who bear the authority of government to stop and ask whether the eliminationist rhetoric has gone too far.
For whatever may be anybody’s opinions on the issue of labor and unions, nobody should be advocating what amounts to violent civil unrest in the streets and public places of America. We would be well-advised to remember the words of that Republican president, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, who wrote:
"Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
Such words, if spoken today, would probably drive some of our more unhinged voices to claim that Pres. Lincoln had deserved assassination at the hands of the traitor John Wilkes Booth.
Rather than engage in cynical calculations about whether stirring up violence to discredit demonstrators availing themselves of the right of peaceable assembly, the Governors of Indiana should remember not only the Peaceable Assembly guarantee the First Amendment of the United States Constitution but also the similar guarantees contained in Section 4 of Article I of the Wisconsin Constitution, and Section 31 of Article I of the Indiana Constitution, respectively.
More than that, however, public officials at every level should remember that every one of their constituents has an equal call on their service and their solicitude. The greatest challenge for any elected or appointed official is to internalize that basic truth, that even when officials and constituents differ on issues, they are members alike of a commonwealth, and that the commonwealth cannot stand when officials sworn to its service regard some proportion of their constituents as enemies to be provoked into violence, that they may more easily be crushed with whatever force -even deadly force- may be considered appropriate.
The temptation to use a whiff of grapeshot, to want to repeat the tactics of Napoleon on 18 Brumaire, is one that no American public official should contemplate, and which no American citizen should accept. Passions may run high, but public officials and influence-makers owe the commonwealth a higher duty than to appeal to force, violence, or other similar methods to overcome or overawe those who disagree with their views.
Lincoln himself put it best when he reminded a fracturing nation that: "[w]e are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
How the governors of Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana respond to peaceful protest will, to borrow more words of Lincoln, “light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.... We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”
The choice is theirs. Let us hope they make the right one.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney in Cathedral City, where he served two terms on the City Council. The views expressed herein are his own.
Note: Comments will be strictly moderated. Any calls for the use of deadly force will be forwarded to appropriate authorities.
