The Left And Sacred Unions

I had meant to write about McMegan's classy parting shot against the teachers unions in her post admitting that a conservative publication spiked her article because she was insufficiently admiring of the Laffer Curve. "The Laffer Curve and the supply siders pushing it," she wrote, "seem to be the teacher's unions of the right," which apparently means you can't criticize the teacher's unions on the left. Sadly, it seems that the only possible path to intellectual honesty is to be a libertarian, existing far from either party, and fully freed from all manner of orthodoxies and fervently-held beliefs. Or something.

As I said, I was going to write that post, showing that all sorts of people criticize teacher's unions in the pages of large, liberal magazines, but then Matt wrote it, so now I don't have to. To add a few, more recent, examples to Matt's list, though, here's Dana criticizing the teacher's unions for opposing bonuses based on location. Here she is advocating merit pay and weakened tenure protections. Here's Scott Lemieux saying that if there were a deal were liberals "get literally everything we want on education policy as long as [Megan] gets to bust the unions...I'd take it." Scott still contributes to our magazine. Dana is a full-time employee of it.

Indeed, it often seems that there's nothing safer in Democratic circles than criticizing the teacher's unions. Just about every Democrat in the media establishment makes it their favored point of heterodoxy. Indeed, it's gotten so bad that when you ask otherwise smart people what to do on education, they begin waxing rhapsodic over merit pay and ending tenure protections, solutions that, whatever their individual merits, show no sign of being near proportionate to the problems. What they are supposed to be is dangerous to advocate. The only problem is that they're nothing of the sort, and McMegan's attempt to end her story of intimidation with a pox-on-both-your-houses jab at the Democrats is simply false.