“There will be blood,” State Representative Douglas Geiss threatened from the floor of the Michigan House of Representatives as its members debated legislation that eventually made Michigan the nation’s 24th right to work state. Union thuggery is not uncommon or new. It was Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., who said this about the Tea Party: “Let’s take these son-of-a-bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.”

Unions are at peace as long as they get their way. Consider this from Breitbart’s Big Government when Steven Crowder approached union protestors with questions about their responses to what elected Michigan representatives had done on Right-to-Work legislation. Crowder was assaulted, and one person threatened to shoot him.

“In addition to the assault on Crowder, union members tore down a tent that had been pitched by Americans for Prosperity; Breitbart News’ Lee Stranahan captured the union members’ attack as the tent collapsed, with people inside, as union marshals looked on.”

Of course, I’m not saying that every union member is a thug. There are a lot of people in unions who have to be there because of the way our laws are written. Right-to-work legislation’s purpose is to fix this inequity.

Michigan is the most heavily unionized state and has one of the highest rates of unemployment. New businesses wanting to locate in the Wolverine State can’t compete in terms of market realities because of union contracts and union demands.

It’s shocking that a sitting President dismisses the anarchist tactics of one of his largest political supporters. The Nazi Brown Shirts come to mind.

The history of the labor movement in this country is a history of purposeful disorder. “As it entered the industrial age full blast in the 1870s, America had plunged into ‘the bloodiest and most violent labor history of any industrial nation in the world.’”1

Under the auspices of the first Education and Defense Society, “workers met regularly and drilled with firearms.”2 On May 4, 1886, during a labor rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, anarchists had thrown a bomb into police ranks, killing 7 policemen and injuring 70 more. The gathering had been organized to protest the killing of six striking workers at the McCormick harvester plant.

At the trial for the anarchist leaders, the following treatise, written by Johann Most, a leading American anarchist, was entered into evidence: Science of Revolutionary War — Manual for Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitro-Glycerine, Dynamite, Gun-Cotton, Fulminating Mercury, Bombs, Fuses, Poisons, and so forth.3 Most’s guide consisted of information he gathered from his experience at an explosives’ factory in Jersey City. “With a certain zest he contemplated using ‘hand grenades and blasting cartridges … the proletariat’s substitute for artillery.’ Larger bombs were even more promising: ‘That which reduces what had been solid rocks into splinters may not have a bad effect in a court or a monopolist’s ballroom.’”4

Like all romantic revolutionaries, most believed that humanity could be saved only “with blood and iron, poison and dynamite!”5 As one would expect, “the Haymarket incident hurt the labor movement by associating it in public opinion with violence and revolution.”6

In 1912, because of a dispute over unionization, the Los Angeles Times building was dynamited and 21 persons killed. “Sixteen packets of bombs were found in the New York Post Office in April 1919.

In June 1919, bombs damaged the houses of the U.S. Attorney General, the mayor of Cleveland and judges in New York and Boston.”7 In September 1920, a group of anti-capitalist anarchists set off a bomb on Wall Street, killing 38 people.

1. James H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (New York: Basic Books, 1980), 43. [↩]
2. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, 433. [↩]
3. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, 437. [↩]
4. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, 437. [↩]
5. Quoted in Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men, 4. [↩]
6. “Haymarket Riot,” NSA Family Encyclopedia, a special edition of New Standard Encyclopedia (Chicago, IL: Standard Educational Corp., 1991), 7:95. [↩]
7. Michael Barone, “A Brief history of zealotry in America,” U.S. News & World Report (May 8, 1995), 45. [↩]