Free Speech For Teachers Too

How would you like to be a cartoon character? You’d be two-dimensional. You would only have a few colors in your world. But worst of all, you’d have a little balloon floating over your head that somebody else gets to fill with words that are supposedly yours. I think that would be humiliating, even for a cartoon character.
But that’s just about what happens to members of Washington’s teachers union every day. Currently, the Washington Education Association dips its paws into its members pockets and withdraws money that it uses to fund left wing causes and politicians. It’s only about ten dollars per year, but it’s not so much the money as it is the indignity of it. When the union draws money out of a member’s pocket and uses that money to promote politicians and causes the individual opposes, he is essentially having someone fill the little balloon in for him.
I vividly remember voting for an initiative that supposedly banned this practice. And I wasn’t alone. In fact, a large majority of Washingtonians voted for it, 14 years ago to be exact. However, Washington’s former Attorney General and current Governor Christine Gregoire, along with a left leaning state supreme court chosen primarily by Seattlistas, have watered that protection down so much that the unions pretty much take what they want and use their ill-gotten gains to underwrite the political campaigns of, well, people such as our current governor and the more left leaning members of our state judiciary.
Originally, the unions had to seek individual members permission before taking their money. This being the state of Washington, that system had the fatal demerit of making sense and being morally defensible. But that has all been turned around by people who know better than the voters. In order for a teacher to keep the union goons’ hands out of his or her pockets, that teacher must twice annually fill out and submit a form telling the union to keep its grubby mitts away. The Washington State Supreme Court ruled that requiring unions to seek permission before seizing money for political purposes constituted an unconstitutional restriction on the free speech rights of unions.
Only in the land of such loopy liberalism as Washington could a special interest group’s rights gain supremacy over the rights of the individual.
It is telling that, when liberals talk about campaign finance reform, it’s always about restricting the freedoms of those who give their own money voluntarily, in the amount of their choosing, and to the candidate of their choice. That sort of freedom is suspect. But, when the talk of campaign finance reform turns to money that is taken forcibly from dissenting union members to underwrite liberal politicians and causes, the left suddenly loses interest in keeping money out of politics. Like taxes, only money that is extracted involuntarily is clean.
I’ve often found it ironic that liberals consider it too burdensome for college students, or for the parents of high school kids to opt out of any sort of organized prayer, but find it perfectly reasonable to force parents who object to public school sex education to file paperwork getting their kids excused from such classes. In much the same way, teachers who wish to dissent from the leftist dogma of their union overlords are required to single themselves out.
But, perhaps there is a glimmer of hope for the First Amendment in Washington. And maybe, just maybe, Washington’s teachers’ union members will finally gain the free speech freedoms that the rest of us take for granted. The United States Supreme Court has decided to hear the case of teachers who don’t believe that the union should be able to take their money and put words in their mouth without their written permission. In all likelihood, the Supreme Court will rule that unions do not have unfettered access to their members’ wallets unless that member slaps the hand away. This will undoubtedly deprive leftist politicians of one of their few sources of cash. Unions and Hollywood dimwits keep most leftist causes afloat as, when it comes to large volumes of small, individual donations, conservatives win the cash battle. Clearly, when it comes to funding their causes, the left relies on coercion and kooks. And they’re going to lose one of their tools of coercion.