I wanted to post this last night, but I didn't get a chance.

I was on my way home from work, and had just stepped off the subway near my home. On the corner of the nearby large intersection, there was a table set up - lemonade stand style - and two of the great unwashed were manning it. As I passed it, I noticed the hand-made placard taped to the front of the table "Stop the War in Iraq!", just as one of the hippies held out a newspaper called Militant to me and said "Support the unions?"

Me: The unions? Can't help you - I work for a living. (I really didn't expect a response, and I turned to walk away from him)

Him: What's that supposed to mean?

Me: It means I work, and I enjoy doing so. Union members do as little as possible, and at the end of the day, instead of job satisfaction, they walk away with the feeling that they are doing too much for too little. Unions replaced job satisfaction for the lazy among us. And what, by the way, do the unions have to do with the war in Iraq??

Him: They don't support war. War is wrong. This war is for oil!

Me: All the unions feel this way? Including the ones at SNC Lavalin in Montreal and Lockheed Martin in Colorado who are manufacturing munitions for the war? Or the technicians who work on oil platforms and in oil fields around the globe? You must mean the auto workers union. Wait, no, they would be manufacturing the Jeeps an Humvee's for the troops. Which unions do you mean?

Him: Fuckin Nazi.

Me: No sir, Nazi's were socialist - just like you. Good evening.

Yet another illustration of how the left doesn't have a clue as to what they're arguing for or against. They do it by rote, because someone more influential, like the Michael Moore's of the world, filled their heads with the pat phrases, without the benefit of educating them on the actual issue.

But my conversation with this man made me think about unions, and how the NDP is in support of them. How can the NDP support Kyoto and environmentalism-at-all-costs when that would have a direct impact on steelworkers, autoworkers, oil & gas technicians... And more importantly - under those circumstances, how can the unions support the NDP in return?