Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the British Commonwealth following the execution of King Charles the First, instituted the first totalitarians regime in modern history, shutting down theaters, muzzling political dissent, dissolving democratic legislative bodies, even plotting the first genocide of an entire people through modern means.
He did all of this in the name of Christian charity, doing what was "good" for the British people, in accordance with Calvinist Puritan doctrine, a terrible system of theology which inexorably places "the elect" and "the damned" in eternal categories, from which neither saved nor lost can enter or leave by will.
Imagine a dictator so dedicated to the nonexistence of free will, that he felt called, compelled to calculate his committed terrorism with complete resolve! Such a "True Believer" would be the envy of every Communist of the modern age!
Now fast forward to the "this should work" liberalism of today.
Public unions — associations of teachers, police, and fire fighters — are banding together in their best interests because their services are in the best interest of the people whom they claim to serve.
Yet to serve their best interests in serving the best interests of their communities, they claim to need more money, not just in the monthly salaries they earn, but also when the retire, and for all their current and future medical needs. On top of that, they want the local taxpayers to foot the bill for the expansive, expensive outlays, both today and into the unforeseen future.
Granted, public unions are not controlling every thought and move of the citizenry whom they claim to serve — nor do they want to exterminate the Irish — but their justification for outrageous entitlements stems from the same hollow argument for Cromwell's Calvinist Commonwealth.
Public unions are the the modern era's Secular Commonwealth. Their god is raw people power; their goal: more of someone else's money for themselves; their means: public agitation by any means, by menace, by strike, by democratic filibustering.
Here's to every freedom fighter, from Wisconsin to New Jersey, across the United States and around the world, who are agitating to end the thuggish secular theocracy of public workers oppressing the public "for their own good."