LIVING LIBERTY
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A PUBL ICAT ION OF THE FREEDOM FOUNDATION
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THE CASE FOR FREEDOM
Weingarten’s anti-Semitic diatribe exposes the utter depravity of her character
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n March 9, the self-proclaimed “party of unity” drove yet another wedge into the partisan divide of our country with the passage of HR 842. As a practicing attorney who has spent countless hours working on lawsuits intended to help re-open California schools to in-class instruction over the objections of the unions representing that state’s educators, I long ago learned to
Jews are now part of the ownership class. What I hear when I hear that question is that those who are in the ownership class now want to take that ladder of opportunity away from those who do not have it.
By SHELLA SADOVNIK, Litigation Counsel
ignore the cringe-worthy pronouncements of Randi Weingarten, president of the National Federation of Teachers. But as a practicing Jew, I can neither ignore nor tolerate the anti-Semitic comments she directed this week toward Jewish parents whose children — like millions of others throughout the nation — continue to languish at home pretending to learn while school districts and politicians dicker with unions over the terms under which teachers will do the jobs for which they’re being paid. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Weingarten said: “American
She continued:
“Jews were immigrants from somewhere else. And they needed the right to have public education. And they needed power to have enough income and wealth for their families that they could put their kids through college and their kids could do better than they have done. Both economic opportunity through the labor movement and an educational opportunity through public education were key for Jews to go from the working class to the ownership class.” The jaw-dropping irony, of course, is that Weingarten herself is Jewish — married since 2018 to a rabbi. Wikipedia has a long entry on the controversial phenomenon of “self-hating Jews,” but for the purposes of this discussion, there’s no reason to engage in psychoanalysis. Whatever Randi Weingarten does or doesn’t think about herself or the religion she professes to follow, she clearly has no qualms about throwing it under the bus in order to score cheap political points. With anti-Semites. Who else would so eagerly buy into the tired, long-discredited stereotype of Jews as the sinister, unseen puppet masters whose edicts are responsible for whatever calamity befalls the unfortunate and the envious? In her eagerness to shift the blame from union leaders like those in Los Angeles, who have openly demanded concessions such as the defunding of law enforcement, housing for the homeless and universal health coverage in return for returning to the classroom, Weingarten revived all the old prejudices by making her own people a scapegoat. How she squares all this with her conscience — assuming she has one — is her affair. But there’s little question her comments render her unfit to lead the American Federation of Teachers for another minute. If she has a shred of concern for the organization she’s led since 2008, Randi Weingarten will resign immediately. If not, the AFT leadership and members can either remove her or forever share the stain of bigotry and ignorance.
Invoking God to smear right-to-work? Sickening By JEFF RHODES Reprinted from THE KEENE (NH) SENTINEL April 2, 2021 (The article below appeared as a letter to the editor in response to a guest opinion published a week earlier in a New Hampshire newspaper.)
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’m flabbergasted to think anyone could twist the truth about right-to-work protections so shamelessly, let alone three members of the clergy. But the Sentinel’s March 25 guest opinion by Rev. Jason Wells and Bishops James Hazelwood and A. Robert Hirschfeld about New Hampshire Senate Bill 61 (“ ‘Right-towork’ harms everyday NH workers) isn’t merely inaccurate. In a very real sense, its irresponsible mischaracterizations pose a far greater risk for anyone foolish enough to take them seriously than anything the proposed legislation could be accused of. What their snake oil pitch conveniently neglects to mention is the unassailable truth that right-to-work laws don’t compel anyone to do anything.
Nor are they an attempt to “weaken the ability of working people to organize.” There’s no reason whatsoever a worker in a right-to-work state couldn’t form a new union — or remain in his or her current union — if they so desire. All the legislation would do is extend the same right of conscience to those who see the question differently. Perhaps most offensive of all is Wells, Hazelwood and Hirschfeld’s invocation of Exodus 3:7, comparing nonunionized workers in a free society to the Hebrew slaves of ancient Egypt. As painful as it must be for the trio to discover they don’t speak for everyone, however, there are, in fact, millions of workers in this country who don’t share their favorable opinion of union representation. Nor do they embrace the radical leftist political agenda their dues have for too long been forcibly confiscated to help fund.
In Janus v. AFSCME, the U.S. Supreme Court empowered workers by giving them the freedom to choose for themselves whether association with a labor union makes sense in their unique situation. If they choose to waive their right to opt out, so be it. But if workers defect in sufficient numbers to weaken the unions, whose fault is it but the unions themselves for offering an inferior product? In any case, conscripting millions of free Americans to fund a powerful special interest — or the leftist agenda of a handful of politically engaged clergymen — more closely resembles slavery than does the freedom of choice safeguarded in right-towork laws. It is the height of hypocrisy for Wells, Hazelwood and Hirschfeld to abuse this forum to exercise their own freedom of speech while advocating for laws that deny the workers for whom they claim to care so passionately the same right. Shame on them. Jeff Rhodes is vice president for news and information with the Freedom Foundation.
