My father, RIP, was a union guy for 40 years but had a contracting business on the side. He worked extremely hard on both jobs. He railed against the union workers that were "loafers" and the fact the union protected them. He never saw {and nothing I could say would change his mind} the irony, in his position. The same could be said about his politics. Too bad, he was a smart guy, but FDR was his version of God. Forget logic, didn't work.
Mines gone too. He worked for Bethleham Steel in his late teens, joined the Navy on subs at the war's end and became a carpenter. I believe he had a card until we moved to Miami in 1960 where cards weren't a work requirement.
He never said anything nice about unions at all, just the opposite. Eventually he got a job with Boeing as an estimator during Apollo on the pad construction end of things, one being the abatoir for the returned space monkeys.
It's roof was designed to withstand Alaskan snowloads. He was incredulous at the Govt waste, fraud and abuse he saw - particularly from the subs of Boeing, all union of course.
The Democrats who ruled both houses of Congress for 44 of the 48 years between 1932-80 have wrought such damage to our nation's intellect, it at times seems we can never recover from the years of pro-Govt propaganda and indoctrination by the self interested teaching in public schools.
It wasn't until I took and econ 101 class at the time of RWR's campaign speeches, after a four year hitch in the USCG to avoid Nam, that at 28 I finally began to see the light.
If Democrats are Progressives, and Progressives brought us socialism, then Democrats are socialists. And being there is little difference freedom-wise between socialism, fascism and communism.......well, I now know to be true what I before only guessed.
Which party instituted in the US the socialism/fascism they so admired in 30's Europe under Adolf, Benito and Uncle Joe?
Which party had communists in it's elite circles and highest offices of Govt?
Which party do the leftists in Media & Academe gravitate to?
Which party got us in to WWI after promising not to? (Which scholars say we did not have to enter as the warring countries had just about petered themselves out anyway & remembering that w/o WWI, Hitler would never have risen)