This transcript from the PBS NewsHour does not mince words when it comes to the origins of today’s American holiday:

The movement for a national Labor Day had been growing for some time. In September 1892, union workers in New York City took an unpaid day off and marched around Union Square in support of the holiday. But now, protests against President Cleveland’s harsh methods made the appeasement of the nation’s workers a top political priority. In the immediate wake of the strike, legislation was rushed unanimously through both houses of Congress, and the bill arrived on President Cleveland’s desk just six days after his troops had broken the Pullman strike.

1894 was an election year. President Cleveland seized the chance at conciliation, and Labor Day was born. He was not reelected.

Hmmm, well actually 1896 was the election year, but never-mind that. Cleveland did in fact dispatch 10,000 federal troops in response to the 1894 Pullman strike.

Interesting to note, then, how the US Department of Labor portrays that period and the origins of Labor Day:

“Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country,” said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. “All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day…is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.”

I find this quote ironic for two reasons.

First, it plays down the fact that conflict seems to be the reason that the holiday was born.

Second, this is quote is by one of the most influential pro-labor organizers in American history, Samuel Gompers. I think Gompers was more professing his preferred vision of how the holiday should be celebrated, rather than where it came from.

In fact, there is an important lesson in this story that might be obscured completely if we do not consider the nature of the conflict and how it was resolved. The Voice of America points out that Cleveland justified the use of federal troops against American citizens with a loophole in the law:

America’s constitution says federal troops cannot be sent to a state unless the state government asks for them. And no state government had asked for them.

President Cleveland met with his cabinet to discuss the railroad companies’ request. They finally agreed to send federal troops to Chicago — where the strike had started — to enforce federal postal laws. The troops would protect trains carrying mail.

Imagine if President Bush sent troops into New Orleans in order to ensure the mail was delivered on time? And so I suspect that the backlash against the President’s interpretation of the Constitution and the use of federal troops for domestic peacekeeping is what built public momentum and support for the laborers to a point where Labor Day was born.

Incidentally, Cleveland was also the President who put America onto the gold standard, referred to by some as the “yellow brick road”. Strange people later changed Dorothy’s footwear to ruby, while originally silver slippers were the only things that could take her back to reality. Alas, that’s a story for another day…

I’ve been reading the furor over Rumsfeld’s odd comparison of Iraq today to Germany at the end of WWII. Many people say he is calling his detractors pro-Nazi, but I think that obscures the more interesting fact that Rumsfeld continues to show his analysis is removed from reality. Could such a man ever really be expected to achieve success in foreign policy or military objectives, whether they be in Vietnam or Iraq? CNN does a nice job and provides several notable areas for review.

First, Rumsfeld said:

Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis.

Sad, really. Many experts were quick to come forward and counter such a baseless quip with a jolt back to reality:

Henry Kissinger, who served with U.S. forces in Germany at the end of World War II and who served as secretary of state under Republican Presidents Nixon and Ford, said the situations are not analogous.

“In Germany, the opposition was completely crushed; there was no significant resistance movement,” the German-born diplomat told CNN’s “Late Edition.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as national security adviser under President Carter, a Democrat, was less charitable.

“That is really absolutely crazy to anyone who knows history,” he said. “There was no alternative to our presence. The Germans were totally crushed. For Secretary Rumsfeld to be talking this way suggests either he doesn’t know history or he’s simply demagoguing.”

Ok, so Rumsfeld is again wrong about the past, appears to misunderstand the basics of conflict and warfare, and we know that he ruthlessly attacks anyone who disagrees with him. In addition to all that Brzezinski is probably right that Rumsfeld wants to appeal to the emotions and prejudices of the public rather than use rational argument. But what about his plan? What about the state of US intervention in Iraq?

“He has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq,” said Paul D. Eaton, a retired Army major general who was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004.

I think this will be the legacy of the Bush administration, similar to the sort of legacy left by the leadership of Enron. Things might be going badly, and more and more people are falling out of favor, but the executives will keep parading the emperor’s new clothes down main street until there is nothing left but shame:

“If President Bush ever wants to visit with me privately about my counsel on his Cabinet, I am sure he will ask me, but it appears to me it would not be helpful for me to make a comment,” the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said.

You know things are bad when the chairman of foreign relations refuses to express his opinion because he hasn’t been asked by the President to comment on the situation. Isn’t that his job, on behalf of the people, to express his opinion and fight for the best outcome? A fine example of loyalty misplaced.

I suspect that someday we may look back and agree that a group in office were not true Republicans, but instead an extremist right-wing faction mollycoddling Bush so that they could attempt some sort of strange and unrealistic experiment at the expense of the welfare and safety of America.

I have noticed for some time that China has been doing quite a lot of business with developing countries. I remember the Nepalese saying that the quality of Chinese engineering projects in the 1980s was far superior to the other aid they received from elsewhere. Any surprise, then, about a rise of “Maoist” revolutionaries starting in the early 1990s?

In fact, I suspect that if the US really wanted to stem the nuclear reactor development in Iran and North Korea they would need to have stronger diplomatic relations with China. That probably feels like eating crow to President Bush who undoubtedly thought he could just swagger his way through international politics in the same way he took over the US presidency. Alas, even Hizbullah actions that destabilize the Mid-East, at the end of the day, seem to be related to a form of Chinese foreign policy as China supplies Iran and Syria. Do they also call some shots, or keep plausable deniability? Hopefully the US Whitehouse is starting to realize that their brash and confrontational style of diplomacy, coupled with overextending the military into conflicts they can not win, is undermining their own country’s security.

Getting the French to stop selling arms and sit at the table for stabilizing the region is one thing, but hardly impressive for the US. The only reason it could seem impressive today is because of the rediculous antics by US leaders who tried to make France look like an enemy for the past few years. The fact is China and Russia are the real powers who the US needs to come to terms with. If the US continues to let itself be bogged down by the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and trying to figure out how to align itself with it allies, then China will be (intentionally or otherwise) surpassing its biggest competitor by quietly but quickly expanding its economic and military influence over developing markets.

Here is a typical example from 2000 of how people regard Chinese assistance:

China is considered by African countries as a good example in the development of national economy and has good experience and technology that are practical and useful for African countries, said Angolan Industrial Minister Albina Assis at the ceremony.