"The fury and hysteria of the demonstrators opposed to the Wisconsin restrictions on public-employee unions inadvertently revealed the permanent government’s assumption that mere politicians elected by mere voters had no moral authority to challenge the public employees’ long-standing and cozy arrangements. The ongoing debates over public unions in Wisconsin, Ohio, and several other states are about fiscal solvency but they concern, even more fundamentally, the future of the republican form of government in America. We know from the relentless demonstrations in the streets of the Wisconsin city named after James Madison that the permanent government will go to great lengths to defend its prerogatives. Will the citizenry do what is necessary to reclaim its sovereign control over the res publica – the matters that properly belong to the public? "
[Ohio Farmer]
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