Its not like these old school guys who just take it out when their inner voice tells them.

Traditions can be a good thing. Personal rituals the sometimes individuals have or even our holiday traditions. They can bring people together and harbor a sense of community among groups of people. But some traditions well, they need to be discarded. The Aztec's sacrificed thousands of people to the gods. A passage in the Old Testament of the Bible instructs readers to stone anyone who is not a believer. Also it proscribes the death penalty for anyone caught working on a Sunday. Thankfully the majority of Christians in the modern world do no follow these kinds of policies. Sometimes, however, traditions can be a obstacle to progress. Take the Catholic Church's recent anger over President Obama's requiring them to cover the cost of birth control as part of their health insurance. A furor. Really? In this day and age. Besides the fact that in my view the Catholic church has not moral leg to stand on what with the Spanish inquisition and the waves of pedophile priests recently outed, but this stance just seems outdated in this day and age. 7 billion people in the world projected to grow substantially in the next decade. Its true a few hundred years ago when a lot of people worked on farms and needed the hands having 6-10 children made sense. But in this day and age? And a majority of those children in those days would not survive to adulthood. Abraham Lincoln lost his mother, his father, his sister, his first love all in his youth. But things have changed. And I feel that as times change even long last institutions most change with them. Hell even the Amish will sometimes use a neighbors phone if they need to. Some of the extreme pro-lifers even oppose condoms in places like South Africa where AIDS is rampant. At some point this adherence to tradition simply blocks any kind of effort to move forward and does a disservice to humanity at large.

Just because your nametag says manager doesn't make you better then me

Presidential candidate and general asshole (in my opinion) Newt Gingrich recently said that child labor laws were 'stupid' and that children in urban schools should help out and replace the Unionized janitors. Although Newt's statements are obviously moronic and callous they reflect a growing but perhaps veiled criticism aired by many of his colleagues in the Republican party. China is killing us, they say. A recent Wall Street Journal article touted that fact that when a few thousand factory jobs come up the Chinese can fill them easily. Its easy to find spots for jobs when you don't have to worry about paying people a decent wage or worry about things like working conditions. In this book I was reading recently about the labor Unions by Philip Dray 'There is power in a union' I have learned that none of this was given away easily. The heads of the major capitalists and manufacturers did not get together one day and decide they were working there people too hard. A campaign went on for a long time in the late 19th century for a 10-hour day which was vehemently opposed by business leaders. One CEO of a Pennsylvania railroad organization on strike suggesting that if the strikers had nothing to eat perhaps they would prefer a diets of rifles instead. Indeed the power of capital often won out leading to the summoning of the National Guard to quell strikes. What strikes me most is how the things that we enjoy as working people, overtime, holiday pay, weekends, had to be fought for so much by working people. Even things like unemployment insurance had to be lobbied by the people. Alfred Sloan of General Motors even once suggested that it took 14 years to repeal prohibition and it would take the same time to repeal the new deal. So despite the negative image the Unions have gotten as of late anyone who has ever worked any kind of menial job of any kind or most jobs owes a debt of gratitude to the Unions.

A working class hero is something to be.

Its 10 at night and I don't want to go to work. More then anything I see my freshly made bed with its warm sheets and I ponder just going back to bed. But besides the obvious fact that I need to work to live I also think about the many people in history who have worked, and who didn't want to and had to. The early mill workers in 19th century America working 12 to 14 hour days with only one day of reprieve. Of the soldier in the Civil War marching twenty to thirty miles sometimes with no shoes. Of the slaves toiling in the cotton fields of the south. Of the myriad of hardship and toil experienced by peoples of all races and genders throughout history. In reality in truth by that measure I have it easy. In fact me just being born in the first world with running water and toilets and heat I have it easy. So when I think of it from that prospective I throw on my work garb and head out into the cold starlit night.