Never On Sunday

Pundits wondered what the rise of the Tea Party, and especially the election of teabaggers to major offices, might mean. Now we know.

In Missouri, it means an effort to eliminate child labor laws, that we might return to the blessed age when children could work 16-hour shifts in any industry, with no minimum wage.

In Wisconsin, it means an effort to deny government workers the right to collective bargaining, a refusal to allow government workers to bargain for anything but a pure salary increase, and a refusal to allow that to exceed the cost-of-living increase. Police and the National Guard would be exempt. They’ve got the guns, after all—which will be trained on the teachers, at Governor Walker’s direction. A return to the blessed age when thugs could be used to bust unions and keep the workers in their place.

In South Dakota, it means a bill to legalize the killing of doctors who perform abortions. A return to the blessed age when—no, wait, there was no blessed age when murdering doctors was okay. Not in America. Maybe back in medieval Europe, when medicine was still suspect as a tool of the devil.

In short, it means a return to barbarism. Primarily the barbarism of the gilded age, when you worked for the man at the price he felt like paying you, or you starved. But what do you expect from a movement led by the likes of Judson Phillips, president of Tea Party Nation, who feels that renters shouldn’t be considered citizens. You know, like Russian serfs or something, virtual slaves to the property owners back before socialism made them all uppity.