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I respectfully disagree, without free markets of free choice - there is no freedom as the Founders intended. It is severely diminished. The Equal Protection, Genl Welfare & Commerce clauses were after 120 some odd years miraculously reinvented by judicial fiat. Unions from day one served their bosses and the politicians that empowered them over the individual, period. They solved nothing that market forces by men of free will wouldn't have. Unions were always about keeping southern blacks out in America and N Africans and Near Easterns out in Europe. The more socialist the more unionized they were. And never forget that socialism is THE step between freedon and totalitarianism.

Our so-called Progressives borrowed every bit of the policies, which required the constitutional corruption that ensued, from the pre-Hitler Socialist Germans a la Marx. By the thirties, FDR, Stalin, Hitler, Churchill, Mussolini were all a regular mutual admiration society, all quoted to have said so of the others. When FDR died Uncle Joe said "there goes my man in Washington".

Our politicians were envious of the power the Euro-dictators wielded. The insistence of the industrialists cum global operators, Rockefeller & House of Morgan among them, who profited from both sides of both world wars, ceaselessly lobbied Govt for the regulation and price supports that insulated them from the small competitors who were responsible for the falling prices of commodities, freight and utilities rates that had benefited all American consumers for the last qtr of the 19th C. Govt never prevented monopoly, they created it.

They got what they wanted, Govt subsidy thru the ICC, the Fed and a fiat currency to inflate to finance business, wars, vote buying and Govt expansion, & to top it off an unconstitutional Fedl income tax, all in hand by 1913. Just in time to get into the war Wilson promised we would not enter. A war without which Hitler would not have risen.

I suggest you may find a different historical viewpoint to your liking and fear your history texts are the same ones used by leftist public and university educators. After all there are fewer than 10% of our educators who don't call themselves liberals. Most conservative and classical liberal educators are in the sciences. Today's socialists (progressives) stole the name liberal - they are not, they are leftists - our Founders were real liberals. These are the people that select the textbooks!

Now in the liberal arts, they are decidedly solid leftists - communists & socialists - trendy but foolhardy believers in some utopianism that has as yet met economic failure, or serious underperformance, where ever it's been tried. That we have remained the most free market oriented country in spite of our backsliding, is the only clue you need to see what works and what does not.

Freedom Works best, anything short of it is some degree of slavery. Just look at the dupes in Euroland suffering dbl digit unemployment, shrinking pension funds and big fat rich politicians. Did you know that the more socialist the higher the wealth disparities?

May I suggest where one gets the constitutional limited govt viewpoint of history ignored and lied about by modern leftwing academe? All are super informative. Let me know what you think of them.

(great essay - read this if nothing else) http://praxeology.net/RC-BRS.htm

mises.org

cato.org

I will check out the links. I'm somewhat familiar with the Cato Institute, I was pretty much a Libertarian at one time. I've still got a pretty strong libertarian streak in me, but I come back to my opinion that there is a certain amount of human nature that they don't take into account (the communists make the same mistake, in a different direction). You make very good arguments, but my textbooks are just books in general, all the way from Solzenytzen to, oh...I dunno..., Zell Miller. Along with observations from just living life. I'm already aware that classic liberalism has been usurped by what is actually much closer to communism. I still stay there is a "pendulum" analogy between libertarianism and communism, with both sides missing the boat on human nature (of course, communism misses by a LOT further margin).

As I've gotten older, I think my viewpoint is closer to what used to be called a very conservative Democrat. In other words, it doesn't hurt to throw the average "working Joe" a bone now and then, it doesn't hurt to help poor people get a leg up, and sometimes a limited government can be the best way to accomplish these things. I'm pretty sure that you will disagree with me on that, and at one time I would have as well. That's okay, people change, opinions change. I come back to human nature, and the fact that ALL people will never be achievers, bad things do happen to good people sometimes, they WILL need help from someone. Unfortunately, history also shows that religious institutions, capitalism, and all of the other entities out there just won't step up to the plate to do the job. A prime example is slavery and the institutional racism that followed. It took government (truly following the Constitution), to step in and accomplish what capitalism wouldn't. Human nature at work again. I know that "promoting the general welfare" has been vastly abused by those in power, but the fact remains that the founders DID put that in the Constitution, and they probably knew there would be a lot of disagreement at some point as to it's limitations.

I'll be honest with you, I think that if everyone in this nation were a Christian, you could strip the government down to just defense and basic law enforcement, and I for one would be thrilled to live in a libertarian Utopia. Since that's not the case, I can see a role for government now and then to step in and do what it can to help people and alleviate suffering and unfairness.

Anyway, I've probably strayed away from the subject of unions, but I do agree that unions have outlived their usefulness to a great extent. We'll probably just have to agree to disagree about whether they were ever necessary or not. You seen to want to roll back the current "unholy alliance" of government and corporations, and I'm with you 100% on that! Best of luck to you.