I realize he is the exception, but I have to say I will not stand behind a union that resorts to violence to get its way. I realize that you are a union supporter and I respect that. I am not against the unions so much as I am against the corrupt individuals that run the unions. IMHO they are no different that the politicians and lobbyists in Washington.
I've read a couple of your "justifications" of union violence in this thread. I'm sorry, I don't buy it. Especially when the people they attack are other members of the middle class.
Immie
Did you see the movie,
Hoffa? If so, do you believe Jimmy Hoffa could have brought the Teamsters Union to prevail over the brutal goon oppression waged against his early membership without meeting violence with violence?
When I was a boy growing up in South Brooklyn I knew an old Italian fellow who lost the sight in one eye from a beating he got from a gang of company-hired goons while walking a picket line outside the
Railway Express truck yard in Long Island City. He said that was not uncommon and I've read quite a bit that confirms everything he told us.
I am not a violent person by nature. But I know and I accept that there are times when violence is unavoidable. I know that sometimes the best way to fight fire is with fire. I know that Jimmy Hoffa made a pact with the devil out of sheer necessity. But if he hadn't done that my son-in-law, along with millions of other truckers would still be working for coolie wages and living like peasants. And I know the same can be said for longshoremen and many other union members.
What we're talking about here is class warfare -- which can get pretty damn brutal. I don't like it but I understand it. The people who become involved in it at the base-level are not refined, well educated and gentle-natured. They are rough-hewn individuals who drive trucks, load and unload ships, work on high iron and bull-work construction jobs. When they are positioned by manipulative management-level forces in opposition to each other, violence is inevitable. They are fighting for the bread on their tables.
Using the past of sixty or seventy years ago, an environment which no longer exists, as a justification for modern thuggery? You knew an old man sixty years ago, whose stories of violence long past supposedly justify violence today, when management hires lawyers, instead of hooligans? Don't you condescend to lecture me on the necessity of violence; I am an American combat veteran, and proud of it! Violence was my profession, and I am intimately familiar with a level of it which is beyond anything you have experienced. I despise it, in a way you cannot understand. I exercised it, not for selfish motives, but for the sake of a solemn oath to protect this nation's constitution. For that oath, I have faced death. For that oath, I have seen men give their very lives, blown to pieces, shot, bayonetted, and tortured to death when captured. For that oath, I have killed America's enemies face to face and hand to hand. For that oath, I have given orders which sent men to their death. For that oath, I have lived with the nightmares and memories of what I have seen, and had to do. For that oath, I have endured the scorn and jeers of Americans like you, without retaliation.
You and people like you have damned me for that, while excusing the selfish violence of "rough-hewn men" against their government and their fellow Americans, in defiance of law, and the constitution I fought to preserve. I am a warrior, forged in the heat of battle, not some street fight; tempered with the discipline of duty and honor, not lawlessness. Long ago I laid down my rifle and my ruck, and put my uniform away; but my oath remains; and with it my love for this nation; they do not expire, until Old Glory drapes my coffin. I hope I have fought my last battle, but I have seen freedom lost; I have seen a country turned into a slaughterhouse; and I will NEVER stand idly by while ANYONE attempts to do that here in America, whether for "bread", ideology, or political power. I am not alone; there are many more like me, who will fight a domestic enemy with the same determination and dedication we fought a foreign one; who will never shrink from our duty; however difficult or unpleasant. Those who would tear up our constitution, who would turn this nation into a den of thieves and thugs, who would replace the rule of law with the rule of the rabble in the street, will have to go through us to do it. That is REAL "necessary violence", and ANYONE who contemplates initiating it because he can't get his way, had better think long and hard before attempting it. You do your worst; we will do our best!
