The crisis in Wisconsin brings up some interesting comparisons

In the past two days, I have had the occasion to read many editorials and op/ed pieces concerning the debacle in Wisconsin. Accompanying many of these, are reader submitted comments. Many of which decry the actions of the Wisconsin governor and laud the wishes and dreams of someone like FDR to once again appear to salve the savage beast of the public's social anxieties.

So just what would the great leader of the New Deal have to say about contemporary events in Wisconsin and other states where collective bargaining has all but hobbled these state budgets?

Even President Franklin Roosevelt, a friend of private-sector unionism, drew a line when it came to government workers: “Meticulous attention,” the president insisted in 1937, “should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government….The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.” The reason? F.D.R. believed that “[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable.”

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