The Volokh Conspiracy
[David Kopel, September 8, 2007 at 5:10pm] Trackbacks
New Kopel stuff:

In today's Rocky Mountain News media column, I praise the Denver Post's new website, PoliticsWest.com, which uses blog power to expand the paper's coverage of politics throughout the Rocky Mountains. My previous column dealt with a topic which I had first raised on the VC (and on which the comments provided good insight): the law and ethics of a talk radio host encouraging the videotaping of patrons of a swinger's club.

On my father's website, there's a new article which uses Labor Day to remember the Colorado state government's massacre of the striking coal miners at Ludlow, Colorado. In another column, he details the battle between then-Republican Governor Bill Owens and former Republican Secretary of State Natalie Meyer over casino regulation. Owens won in the short term, but Democratic Governor Bill Ritter is now carrying out Meyer's program for more regulatory employees.

Cornellian (mail):
I'd be tempted to encourage the patrons of the swinger's club to videotape the talk radio host.
9.8.2007 7:25pm
LTEC (mail) (www):
I don't get the feeling that Jerry Kopel is making any effort to tell an unbiased history of this strike. It sounds too much like the propaganda language of unionism. I've never before heard of this incident, but here is what I can get out of the posting.

For one thing, it appears that after the strike began, the strikers were fired. Therefore, they were no longer on strike. The "strikebreakers" appear therefore to be people hired instead of them. The ex-workers decided to not allow this, and illegally occupied land. Why didn't the government at this point merely arrest them? Is it because it preferred to kill them instead? It's possible. But it seems to me more likely that the government felt it would be dangerous to merely arrest them, because the ex-workers were committing and threatening violence in a manner that is very common and that is very commonly left out of "histories".

Certainly Kopel's article does noting to clarify all this. Now it's likely the company did something immoral or illegal in firing the workers, and it's certain the government should have preserved law and order in a much less deadly way. But the idea that unions, or would-be unions, should be the law unto themselves is something that I do not accept.
9.8.2007 9:39pm
Cornellian (mail):
For one thing, it appears that after the strike began, the strikers were fired. Therefore, they were no longer on strike.

I don't think the second follows from the first.
9.9.2007 3:19am
byomtov (mail):
But it seems to me more likely that the government felt it would be dangerous to merely arrest them, because the ex-workers were committing and threatening violence in a manner that is very common and that is very commonly left out of "histories".

So it was safer to just shoot them. Got it.
9.9.2007 11:11am
Clayton E. Cramer (mail) (www):
My book For the Defense of Themselves and the State examines the Ludlow, Colorado massacre. It's one of the reasons why labor unionists used to be notable for their lack of enthusiasm for restrictive gun control.
9.9.2007 10:38pm

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