How Sacred is Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition? Not as Sacred as William Cronon Believes
Among the many consequences of Governor Scott Walker’s effort to turn the tide of collective bargaining is a renewed interest in the history of American labor law, both nationally and in Wisconsin. One recent contribution to that history is a recent column in the New York Times by the distinguished Wisconsin historian William Cronon, who seeks to paint Scott Walker as a modern radical who has one too many characteristics in common with the late Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose despicable antics in the United States Senate turned many of the state’s progressive Republicans into ardent Democrats.
What is so troublesome about Cronon’s column is that he thinks that he occupies the moral high ground as of right, and needs to do nothing to explain or justify positions which once announced have the air of a self-evident truth. He notes that the state was the first to introduce workers’ compensation laws, unemployment insurance, and public unions in 1911, 1932 and 1959 respectively. The key observation here, however, was that this was all on a downward cycle.
Mandatory workers’ compensation laws have some serious defects, but their saving grace is that they were patterned on the voluntary workers’ compensation arrangements that market forces had put together in the mines and on the rails in England in the 1860s and 1870s, which were then brought over into the United States. The unemployment insurance laws have the positive of cushioning the blows of bad fortune. But they also have the vice of prolonging the condition. And worst of all, collective bargaining in the public sector has no serious redeeming virtue, but has the great vice of strengthening the monopoly hand of unions by dispensing them from another law that had long been championed by Progressives—the antitrust laws—but only insofar as it applied to business conduct.
For Cronon to make out his case, he has to show that the system he defends meets some public interest standard. But apart from praising the institutions he likes, he offers no substantive defense for his position on labor law. Nor does he supply any alternative explanation as to how Wisconsin’s finances fell into such sorry disarray, or why other strong Progressive policies may well have contributed to the state’s long-term decline. It is just this type of argument by fait that persuades the editorial page of New York Times that published his column, and which brings out Paul Krugman on yet another of his crusades.
In making these observations, I want to make it very clear that I dissociate myself from any deplorable Republican efforts to ransack the emails of Professor Cronon who has a perfect right to speak and write as he pleases. But by the same token, the evident level of self-satisfaction in his writing is ironic. For years Progressives of all stripes have attacked classical liberals for their ostensible belief that the principles of natural law undergird their own highly political positions. I think that this charge is wrong on the simple ground that competitive institutions outperform monopolistic ones, both for labor and for capital. But for these points, the irony is that once the Progressives are pressed hard on their own favored reforms they lapse into the same kind of self-assurance for which they have attacked their more market-oriented opponents. Whatever their political appeal, they need to do a lot better to transform the terms of the intellectual debate.
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Jun '10
Re: How Sacred is Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition? Not as Sacred as William Cronon Believes
If you have no individuality, or dignity, then you give up nothing by joining a public-sector union. I think that explains the attitude these people have towards the public that pays their salary. They don't care. They don't have any introspection or self-respect, but they have plenty of demands. I guess they use the later to make up for the former.
Oct '10
Re: How Sacred is Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition? Not as Sacred as William Cronon Believes
My favorite part of his original piece was how "Republicans in Wisconsin are seeking to reverse civic traditions that for more than a century" by reversing a law passed in 1959. I find it comforting that Mathematics is not one of the subjects he is teaching.
Jun '10
Re: How Sacred is Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition? Not as Sacred as William Cronon Believes
And worst of all, collective bargaining in the public sector has no serious redeeming virtue, but has the great vice of strengthening the monopoly hand of unions by dispensing them from another law that had long been championed by Progressives—the antitrust laws—but only insofar as it applied to business conduct.
Bingo. A monopoly is a monopoly is a monopoly. The notion that some monopolies are more virtuous than others breaks all molds of hypocrisy.
May '10
Re: How Sacred is Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition? Not as Sacred as William Cronon Believes
The liberals do not want a fair debate on the facts. They want anyone that does not think like them to just shut up.
Sep '10
Re: How Sacred is Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition? Not as Sacred as William Cronon Believes
Richard Epstein:
In making these observations, I want to make it very clear that I dissociate myself from any deplorable Republican efforts to ransack the emails of Professor Cronon who has a perfect right to speak and write as he pleases.
What is deplorable about a public records request? Government workers across the state have been using their public email accounts to engage in political activity, and the taxpayers have every right to review these records.
Jun '10
Re: How Sacred is Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition? Not as Sacred as William Cronon Believes
Monopolies exist for a very good and competition-restricting set of reasons. But the reason monopolies are accepted and can function within a free market is that they are heavily regulated, especially when it comes to their ability to set prices. Public employee unions face none of these restrictions. They are unregulated. Even the supposed robber barons didn't have this sort of power over their customers. How is this democratic?
Re: How Sacred is Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition? Not as Sacred as William Cronon Believes
Bill Cronon is a smart and thoughtful guy and an excellent historian. The defects in his argument are rooted in the fact that he operates in a world in which there is virtually no dissent from the opinions he embraces. In the absence of any pressure to justify institutions and practices one regards as good, one tends to forget how to make the requisite argument.
Re: How Sacred is Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition? Not as Sacred as William Cronon Believes
Mark Belling Fan
Richard Epstein:
In making these observations, I want to make it very clear that I dissociate myself from any deplorable Republican efforts to ransack the emails of Professor Cronon who has a perfect right to speak and write as he pleases.
What is deplorable about a public records request? Government workers across the state have been using their public email accounts to engage in political activity, and the taxpayers have every right to review these records. · Mar 30 at 11:07am
Richard is correct on this question. College professors are not government workers in the ordinary sense. Their time -- apart from that spent in the classroom, during office hours, and at meetings on campus -- is their own. Its proper use is reading, research, and writing. Bill Cronon, who is an historian, was operating within the sphere of his professional responsibilities when he contributed an op-ed to The New York Times -- just as Richard and I are when we write for Ricochet. The fact that Richard is right and Bill Cronon, mistaken in his assessment of the situation alters in no way the legitimacy of their intervening in the public debate.
Re: How Sacred is Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition? Not as Sacred as William Cronon Believes
Let me add to my previous remark this: Bill Cronon, Richard, and I have tenure. We were given tenure in part because our previous contributions to public discussion in our various fields seemed to our senior colleagues at the time to justify licensing us to continue teaching and publishing without interference. It is a great privilege to be able to say what one thinks about law, history, and public policy with impunity and to have the time in which to do so. Bill Cronon and Richard have, without a doubt, exercised that privilege in such a manner as to justify its being conferred on them. Whether I have done so is not for me to say.
Sep '10
Re: How Sacred is Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition? Not as Sacred as William Cronon Believes
Paul A. Rahe
Mark Belling Fan
Richard is correct on this question. College professors are not government workers in the ordinary sense. Their time -- apart from that spent in the classroom, during office hours, and at meetings on campus -- is their own. Its proper use is reading, research, and writing. Bill Cronon, who is an historian, was operating within the sphere of his professional responsibilities when he contributed an op-ed to The New York Times -- just as Richard and I are when we write for Ricochet. The fact that Richard is right and Bill Cronon, mistaken in his assessment of the situation alters in no way the legitimacy of their intervening in the public debate. · Mar 30 at 11:52am
The Republican Party made an open records request of Cronon's government email account because they believe he used that email account to engage in partisan political activity. What is unreasonable about that request? Political organizations, journalists, and taxpaying citizens make these sorts of requests all the time. I am not aware of a professors exemption to the open records law.
Re: How Sacred is Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition? Not as Sacred as William Cronon Believes
Mark Belling Fan
Paul A. Rahe
Mark Belling Fan
The Republican Party made an open records request of Cronon's government email account because they believe he used that email account to engage in partisan political activity. What is unreasonable about that request? Political organizations, journalists, and taxpaying citizens make these sorts of requests all the time. I am not aware of a professors exemption to the open records law. · Mar 30 at 12:06pm
If professors are not exempt, it is because the government of the state of Wisconsin, like the government of most states, has no idea what a university is. Civil servants may be barred in this fashion from partisan political activity while on the job and properly so. They are there to help the governor execute the laws. Professors who persecuted students or colleagues of another partisan persuasion would be out of line. But they are expected -- outside the class room -- to speak their minds, especially in spheres where they have some sort of expertise. The response of the apparatchiks in the Wisconsin Republican Party to Bill Cronon's writing an op-ed for is a disgrace.
Sep '10
Re: How Sacred is Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition? Not as Sacred as William Cronon Believes
If Cronon used his government email account to encourage other faculty and staff to call in sick, and to join the protests, would that be out of line?
The UW system is a significant line item in the state budget. If a UW employee, be it a janitor or a tenured professor, is using state resources to become an apparatchik himself, I want to know about it. If the emails reveal no shenanigans, then everyone moves on with their lives.
It is hard for me to feel any sympathy for Cronon, who chose to insert himself into the debate, while at the same time I see overt intimidation and threats issued by union bosses to private businesses across the state simply for trying to remain neutral.
May '10
Re: How Sacred is Wisconsin's Progressive Tradition? Not as Sacred as William Cronon Believes
Wow, there's a blast from the past! Bill Cronon was a couple years ahead of me in high school, and we were friends for a while, though I was clearly the junior member of the friendship. He cut an impressive figure even then, and I was sure he was destined for great things, though espousing crackpot conspiracy theories may not have been what I had in mind. Even then he had a surfeit of confidence in his opinions, and as I recall he was rather popular with the girls.
Anyway, I think it's unseemly for the Wisconsin GOP to go after a college professor for being a vocal crackpot on politics. It's like going after a plumber for showing too much cleavage when he gets down to look under the sink.