Another example of rampant Libspeak.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has declared war on state workers, almost literally.

First, he proposed a state budget that would cut retirement and healthcare for workers like teachers and nurses, and strip away nearly all of their collective bargaining rights. But even more significantly, he announced last Friday that he had alerted the National Guard to be ready for state workers to strike or protest, an unprecedented step in modern times. ["modern times"? What's the definition? I suspect it's just a way of making the behavior seem archaic and therefore, bad, out-dated, and unintelligent.]

This would be the first time in nearly 80 years that the National Guard would be used to break a strike by Wisconsin workers, and the first time in over 40 years that the National Guard would be used against public workers anywhere in the country. The last time was the Memphis sanitation strike in 1968, just before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. [Right... and how is this emotionally highly-charged incident relevant? Did his assassination somehow cause any action by the National Guard?]

The outrage [as if Libs have any other emotion (except, of course, for fear] was immediate [This is probably just an estimate as opposed to an actual, scientific, measurement of time] across [unspecified, unbiased :D] labor message boards, [unspecified] Twitter and [unspecified] Facebook pages. Over the last two days, [probably] tens of thousands have protested in front of the capitol building in Madison in defiance [yet another heroic descriptor] of the governor, some [some=one, but "some" seems like more, so...] even camping overnight.

To understand the visceral, emotional nature of this outcry, you have to understand the history of the National Guard and the labor movement [ONLY from our perspective, of course]  -- and what this means for the relationship between labor and the state today.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, governors often mobilized the National Guard during strikes.  Sometimes the Guard was genuinely neutral, assigned to buffer the dangerous zone between strikers and their employers. Other times, the Guard was explicitly charged with breaking the strike. During these instances, violence often erupted between strikers and soldiers with terrible, bloody results [This would be my first indicator to not argue with any military organization... until I was ready].
National Guard soldiers clashed with strikers [and unprepared strikers clashed with "soldiers" too but you know what we meant] in Buffalo, N.Y., Birmingham, Ala., Coeur d’Alene, Idaho,  Salt Lake City and Telluride, Colo., at the turn of the 20th century. In just two years, between 1911 and 1913, the militia [Oops! Did we do that again? *blushes*] was mobilized against coal miners in West Virginia, textile workers in Massachusetts, textile workers in New Jersey, and copper miners in Michigan. During an infamous bloodbath in 1914, soldiers killed striking coal miners and their families in Ludlow, Colo., including at least six men, two women and 12 children [Listen, if it happened in 1914, it's likely that we have an exact death count by now, right? Also, how come they don't mention the fact that these striking coal miners put themselves and their families at mortal risk? I don't know about the rest of you, but I learned to pick my battles a LONG time ago... way before I had a wife and children about whom to be concerned].

During the 1934 Auto-Lite strike in Toledo, a battle raged for five days between 6,000 strikers and 1,300 members of the Ohio National Guard, leaving two strikers dead and more than 200 injured [Okay, I might be beating a dead horse here but if you outnumber your "enemy" more than 3 to 1 and you lose, you're bringing a knife to a gunfight. Furthermore, the only reason you didn't fare worse was that the National Guard was trying like hell not to kill or hurt any of you. Of course, 2 plus "more than" 200 of you insisted on having it their way.] Three years later, during the famous occupation of General Motors in Flint, Mich., the governor ordered thousands of soldiers to the factory, as the [slow learner] workers swore to resist them by force.

And in Wisconsin, Gov. Albert Schmedeman used the National Guard to disrupt a 1933 strike by dairy farmers, sometimes with bayonets and tear gas, when they tried to raise the price of milk. [Ever-credible, reliable, and again, unspecified] Newspapers reported that he was preparing for a "bona fide war" [War- you know- the last thing a newspaper wants]. The Guard mobilized again the next year during a strike by the United Auto Workers. It was the last time the National Guard would be used during a strike in Wisconsin. Until, possibly, now.

The use of the National Guard against workers is supposed to be  a relic of the past ["supposed to be"? According to whom? It seems to me that or as long as civilians behave civilly, there's no need for "clashes" with the National Guard. Let's face it, ALL of us at one point in our lives wanted to get up in the face of some velvet rope bouncer but only those of us who were also in need of a beating ever did. Sure it's unfair. Sure it sucks. But that doesn't change the fact that you're still not going to win so spare yourself the humiliation/pain.], nearly unimaginable to us [That unimaginability is exactly the reason you people keep repeating the same mistakes expecting different results. Einstein said that repeating the same behavior and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. I say it's the definition of slow learning. Libs and their incessant repetitively insistent behavior reminds me of nothing more than  a fly trying to penetrate a plate glass window and wondering if maybe this time it'll work.]. That's because of an uneasy understanding, evolved over time, between citizens and the state over the use of state force against civilians [as if they didn't try anything else first]. In her excellent book "Army Surveillance in America, 1775-1980," historian Joan Jensen argued that this understanding "maintained restraint, sometimes precariously, in using the army to defend the government from the domestic population."

In other words, Jensen argues that the concept of voluntary restraint by the executive branch -- as opposed to codified legal restraint -- is still largely the governing principle at work when deciding whether to mobilize a domestic military force. So Gov. Walker's action is significant because it is an expanded interpretation of the power of the executive office. This would introduce once again the idea that a governor could use the military to impose his personal, political will on a state. [Which is exactly why we need the 2nd amendment. Of course Libs don't believe in guns and that's why this is all so cataclysmic for them.]

The cultural and historical significance of Gov. Walker's action can't be ignored. When he proposes using the National Guard to break a strike, he conjures a period of American history in which labor and capital were locked in violent, terrible struggle, when income inequality had reached epic heights, and workers had to bleed to organize. This is a step backward, not forward, in the march of American progress. [And so are unions but that goes completely unmentioned in this article.]

Link to article here.

The comments are also interesting although they vary widely with sources being from both extremes. As always though, there are a few interesting and rational comments that really shed light on the issue. Here's one of them:

the real truth

Maybe if you realized that the workers only paid less than 8 % of their salary for benefits while you and I pay upwards of 25% or more for bennies- you all would not be stating that the governor is threatening something. Sorry- pay up. Nothing is free anymore and it is time that unions either go away or realize that they will have to pony up just like the rest of us. For way too long these unions have bullied people, politicians and layed the heavy hand in favor of the free handouts given to them by the democrats- FINALLY SOMEONE IS STANDING UP AND SAYING ENOUGH. I do not feel sorry for these workers, I do not feel sorry that they have to pay a little into their pensions. Open 401Ks like the rest of us, pay into your healthcare plan- these unions are one of the big reasons why states and cities are broke- sadly- all I can say is tough.

And here's another although I'm not sure the commenter thinks of this as a good thing. But seriously, what union isn't Dem friendly?:

Rachel is right

Rachel Maddow nailed it on last night's (2/17) program. What is happening in Wisconsin is a partisan strike at ultimate destruction of the Democratic Party by eliminating a major source of its support and funding, i.e., a Dem friendly union. This is not the first effort in this direction and it will not be the last.