For an example of how not to argue a point, I turn to Mark Anderson on The Daily Kos, who is a union supporter and a little upset:
Over the last couple weeks I have written about unions. While the majority of comments are supportive, there has been a trend of folks using Republican talking points about unions. You know the arguments: they are corrupt, they are not needed, they have idiotic rules, and members of public employee unions get paid too much.
You can always find those exact same comments in every single post about organized labor. So let’s talk about corruption, idiotic rules, and unionized public employees.
And then … he doesn’t. Instead, he highlights bad rules and illegal activities undertaken by businesses. And then, as if this makes any sense, he finishes up with this:
Unions are a human endeavor. As with all things human, they are imperfect. They will make mistakes, have stupid rules, and fall victim to corruption—just as any business will. When you complain about issues with unions, you are not complaining about things that are unique to unions.
Which begs, with hands and knees and chin on the ground, what to do about these problems in unions!
Look, unions and businesses are not institutions that fall into the same general category, they really aren’t. Mark’s implicit argument tact is that if we can find a way to fix them in a business, then the unions can be fixed in the same way.
But we’re not talking about the same structures! Businesses are typically hierarchical boss-employee situations in which employees have little to no say about who will boss them around.
Unions, however, are ideally democratically run institutions in which the leadership of the union, whether it be a single person or a board of some sort, must win a vote of the membership on a periodic basis.
The problems may be the same, but the solutions will be different because the power structures are different. This is the problem of the partisans who cannot bring themselves to suggest solutions to problems on their own side because they’re too busy hating on the “other side.” In Mark’s case, he could have presented possible solutions to these known problems with unions and really presented a winning post.
Instead, he’s just throwing a tantrum.
