There's long been a disconnect between activists who champion workers and the workers themselves - here's why.

There has never been a shortage of well-meaning, socially conscience people who’ve railed against war, poverty, racism and in favor of worker’s rights and the one thing that all these crusaders have shared throughout all the ages is their common failure.

Most of these activists believe their failure lies with the inability of those they champion to get fully engaged in their cause and as usual, they couldn’t be more wrong. The failure lies with the activist’s own inability to connect with people, with their own inability to articulate a practical, working alternative to the status quo.

The activist’s basic belief that “Anything is better than the status quo” makes articulating a workable alternative a moot point to them.

That is why so many of these activists seem shocked that the sum of their efforts has resulted in the degradation of words like “peace,” “rights” and “racism,” instead of any meaningful change.

Amazingly none of them ask “Why?”

They just assume that it’s the public’s fault. Poor old Joe six-pack can’t comprehend their wisdom – “like casting pearls to swine.” The fact of the matter is that the public understands perfectly what IS and is NOT in its own best interests. Workers know intuitively that “worker’s rights” is a term associated with movements like Socialism and Communism that are forever linked to criminal conspiracies. The Union movement, established to “save the worker from the tyranny of unscrupulous owners,” quickly fell into the hands of Socialist crusaders who cared less about “worker’s rights” and more about destroying owners.

Many of the major Unions fell into the hands of organized crime, a redundancy when you consider the socialist movement, what it is - a criminal organization.

That’s why mobsters and socialist reformers were able to share Union power so efficiently, they were cut from the same cloth.

The problem workers have with social reformers is that working people know that they need jobs. The reformer sees work as “wage slavery” and thus couldn’t care less about things like job security.

The reformer sees Utopia as a world where governments take care of the people and everyone’s needs are met by the state.

The workers know that governments get their money from taxes paid by productive businesses and workers and that in order for government to take care of everyone, it would also have to control everyone in a universal form of chattel slavery.

How come Joe six-pack knows this and Ivy League Ivan doesn’t?

One reason that few working people take “peace” and “rights” activists seriously is that more often than not, these activists see individual liberty as the source of the problem.

Afterall, what is “peace,” but the absence of conflict? And how do you eradicate conflict? You stifle dissent and try and force everyone to agree with what you believe is “best for the common good.”

Rights activists talk of a right to adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical care and “human dignity” (which can be anything), but none of these are rights, nor can be in a free society.

In a free society, commodities cannot be rights because they belong to the people who produce them. If medical care is a “right,” then a doctor’s skills belong to “the people” or the community and not to him.

Freedom allows that doctor to sell his skills to the highest bidder, the home-builder the right to sell his homes to those who’ll pay the most and the worker to offer his skills or services to the employer who offers the best deal.

The activist, who thinks the public “just doesn’t get it,” are the ones who don’t understand what’s up.

Workers know that they don’t need government “elites” to take care of them. Their primary problem is a lack of access to more training and better skills. This access would allow workers to make themselves more valuable to employers and expand their ability to compete in the working marketplace.

In the end, there is very little common ground between the worker and the activist. The worker makes a distinction between selling his skills and selling himself, the activist does not.

To the activist, the worker selling his skills to the highest bidder is “wage slavery.” Conversely, most workers see excessive government control as “political slavery” and they fear that as much as death.

The biggest lament among working people isn’t about work or the boss, it’s about coughing up half their check to the IRS!

We’re a flawed species and everything we create carries our flaws. Laissez Faire allows the most creative and best educated to run roughshod over everyone else, and government control allows the best educated, least creative and most politically connected to run roughshod over everyone else.

Each system is rife with abuse. Well-meaning activists as well as rogues and con men alike have espoused “charity” and extolled “the brotherhood of man” and as a result, these terms have become code words for scams.

The social reformer sees pictures of starving children and makes an impassioned plea for “caring and sharing,” while the con man views the same photo and sees a personal opportunity to raise money for the starving so he can pocket the bulk as “operating costs.”

In reality both are wrong and misguided. Neither looks at the reasons for poverty, or for ways to make these people more self-sufficient.

The scammer looks for immediate profit, while the social reformer looks for status or position, as leader of a “humanitarian aid group.” The social reformer bristles at the notion that she too is a scammer, but she is.

Activists always position themselves as “helpers” and helpers are always looking downward to those they help.

That’s why so much of the public doesn’t respond to “peace” and “rights” activists – they’ve had enough.

They’ve seen a thousand scams set up by thousands of people looking to improve their own lot at the expense of others.

The workingman just wants to work and “take care of his own.” That’s the decency of the workingman – he doesn’t seek to control others.

That’s what activists and con men alike admire about workers. It’s why activists claim to champion workers and why con men pretend to be them.

Just as surely, it’s the will to manipulate and control others that workers despise in activists and hucksters. It’s also why politicians and used cars salesmen are held in about equal regard.

The last great Western social reformer was Henry George. At least he tried to set up a practical, workable system – one that respected private ownership, rewarded innovation and understood the basic need of most people to work.

Sadly, he’s been followed by people who have none of his charisma and even less of his basic common sense.