The Patriot Post® · Monday Opinion

Best of Right Opinion

• Jeff Jacoby: Liberate Government Workers From Forced Union Fees
• Kathryn Jean Lopez: Racism, Responsibility and the Way Forward
• Peggy Noonan: What Bob Corker Sees in Trump
• Burt Prelutsky: Repeal, Don’t Replace!
• Michael Reagan: Outing the Weinsteins

For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.

Opinion in Brief

Jeff Jacoby: “Coercing workers to pay for representation they don’t want isn’t a benefit. It’s extortion. And it’s particularly galling when those extorted payments are used to fund political speech and public-policy activism that employees have no wish to underwrite. … It should never have come to this. Thomas Jefferson rightly declared long ago that ‘to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.’ Under the First Amendment, it should have been out of the question for government to force public employees to turn over part of their wages to a labor union they don’t belong to — or, for that matter, to any other political, ideological, or special-interest organization. … If unions are to be tolerated in government workplaces, their support and funding must be wholly unforced. Government workers who choose to join and pay dues … are free to exercise their First Amendment rights of speech and association. Equally free should be those who want nothing to do with the union. Free not to join, and free not to pay.”