It might not be all that difficult, but I'm having trouble coming up with a political platitude that is more ridiculous and ironic than "Right to Work."
If we actually have a "right to work," then every company needs to hire everyone who applies.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, I hear the simple-minded libertarian-types hollering. "Right to Work" applies only when unions are involved. It would be ridiculous to apply it to a free-market! Making every company hire whoever applies is the opposite of a free-market!
Exactly. Which is why "right to work" is illogical in any sense. No one has a "right to work," except when that "right" is balanced by responsibilities--the responsibility to be qualified, to meet established criteria, etc, etc., etc.
By shaving away one responsibility (to pay one's fair share of benefits received) while leaving intact the others, proponents of the so-called "right to work" open the door to shaving away ALL responsibilities--which, of course, is not what they intend, b/c doing so creates chaos in a free-market. If our "rights" are separated from responsibilities--as libertarians and tea-baggers and others of similar ilk like to do when it suits their notion of "rights,"--then purely consistent logical analysis means we can shave away those responsibilities in any context.
Now, your teabaggers and their like-minded allies say this is a mis-application of logic, because they too recognize the concept of "responsibility," and they simply define it differently--as in, responsibility to one's self-interest. Except that saying one has a responsibility to one's self-interest is tautological--responsibility to one's self IS self-interest. This is redefining the concept of responsibility out of existence, which gets us back to the starting point: "right to work" has no corresponding responsibility, and therefore, cannot be considered a legitimate "right."
We have to recognize that there are simply those people who--because of their own biological make-up-- have no sense of responsibility to others. They have attachments and sometimes a view of self-interest that leads them to behaviors that appear to demonstrate a sense of responsibility, but the sense of responsibility is simply not there. When these people behave in criminal ways, we label them sociopaths--but often, those with an atomistic sense of existence define criminal behavior as against their self-interest, and they live within the bounds of the law. But their thrust, their urge, their natural tendency, is always to put themselves first and make every decision based exclusively on how it will affect them.
Perhaps this appears to be a logical conclusion--after all, if I don't put myself first, who will? But the problem with this "logic" is that it denies reality--in particular, the reality that humans are as much social animals as we are individual specimens. Simplifying all decisions to one's self-interest, then, really is just that: simplifying, and simplistic. Sure, it is easier and more convenient and, of course, self-serving--what's not to love?
Reality, however, keeps getting in the way. Before we look at modern humans, let's step back and look at human animals--the primates in our evolutionary chain--and the other primates with whom we share a substantial portion of our DNA. Every single species in this chain is social: the existence of the individual depends on the existence of the group. At its most simple (for those who like simple explanations), this is illustrated in the mother-child relationship--the child cannot survive without the mother. When you stop to consider the number of species in which the offspring are not dependent on the mother--released into the wild at birth--the completely interdependent nature of human existence becomes obvious.
Further, we can see that the mother--in addition to having been dependent on her own mother--is likewise dependent on the group. Survival of individual primates basically is so rare that it is clear no species would have survived, and none of us would be in existence had we not been social animals.
I'm summarizing an enormous amount of information here--but go ahead and try to prove me wrong. I don't need to cite the research, either, because although we have those who want to defend their adherence to self-interest, not even they would be so illogical or unrealistic as to claim we are not social animals.
The next move of the self-interested would be to claim that it is only through a strict adherence to one's self-interest that the species was able to survive--but of course, this is not true, either. A strict adherence to one's self interest--if we go back to the mother-child pair--would mean abandoning one's infant. There is no logical or rational motive to parent an infant. Every moment spent tending to an infant's needs is a moment of self-interested action lost or deferred.
Yet tending to infants is not simply a human trait--it is common among many species. So while we may have imbued this relationship with cultural significance, it is, at root, purely biological--natural, instinctual, inherent in our humaness. Nor is the instinct to care for infants purely female (in the sense of, tied to those with a preponderance of x-chromosome-related traits). Males of many species provide for infants, too. And while it is tempting to say that these actions stem from a desire to perpetuate our DNA, we must recognize that there is no intellectual involvement in that desire--it is, again, purely instinctual--a behavior "in the moment" that occurs without any reference to future gains. If it required anticipating the future to be activated, no other species would nurture their infants, b/c no other species can anticipate the future. The squirrel does not gather and store nuts in anticipation of the future-he does it because he is driven to that behavior, here and now.
Males, furthermore, exhibit the social side of humaness when they bond with females.If sex were the sole drive at play, then non-consenual sex would be common in all primates, and especially in those with significant sexual dimorphism. Males could and would easily hold a female in place and satisfy their sexual drive, like a grown-up changing a todder's diaper. They would need neither permission nor violence. But this type of non-consensual sexual reproduction simply does not exist. The essence of sexual reproduction is pair-bonding--not exclusive, not permanent, but temporary and mutually beneficial pair-bonding. Certainly the practice proved highly successful in evolutionary terms, and those inclined to pair-bonding out-mated those individuals of a species who were not programmed to pair bond. But pair bonding serves no immediate biological purpose--again, it makes more sense (from an individualist perspective), for the male to abandon any connection to the female-and to come back (or seek out another female) the next time the urge strikes.But clearly, males who abandon females, who wandered off and then look around again only when the sexual urge returns, were not highly successful at surviving on their own, or we would have had a lot more of them--individuals highly successful in individual survival, mating enough to create a pre-historic and historical record of their abundance. Devoting resources--food, energy, etc.--serves the species, not the individual. In this regard, then, pair-bonding is a manifestation of the social nature of humans. We need each other to survive.
Why am I bothering with all of this, you might ask? Why go over what many could just figure out on their own? Because, again, there are those among us whose "philosophy" denies the facts of human existence. Their reliance on "reason" and "logic" leads them to conclusions that are going to be utterly catastrophic for our species, and probably more immediately, for the future of the U.S. and perhaps other nations.
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