Instead of Labor Day, why not make Constitution Day the new national holiday?

Source: Conservative Review | September 5, 2016 | Nate Madden

It’s once again the first Monday in September, and that means Americans are taking the day off, hitting the beach, and grilling in honor of all the supposedly wonderful things unions have done. But rather than placing so much public emphasis on Labor Day — a tradition whose time has passed — Americans would be better off observing something that takes place a couple of weeks later: Constitution Day.

Ostensibly, Labor Day is meant to celebrate the achievements of the American workforce, but it’s really an outgrowth of the labor movement geared at celebrating the achievements of unions.

First celebrated on September 5, 1882 by the Central Labor Union Party in New York, Congress designated the first Monday in September Labor Day in 1894 to celebrate the contributions of the American workforce. The holiday was later adopted by state and local governments across the United States, giving most Americans a three-day weekend at summer’s end — which is what most people are really celebrating today, anyway.

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If you ask the average person, however, they’ll tell you that Labor Day is the symbolic last hurrah of beaches and barbeques for the year, the last day you can wear white in public (for some weird reason I never really understood), and the symbolic beginning and the annual go-ahead for pumpkin-flavored coffee at your local caffeine hub.

This makes sense. Thanks to a combination of innovation, market forces, and union cronyism and corruption, the labor movement as we now know it no longer deserves a national holiday any more than America needs unions.

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Ironically, the very fruits of the labor movement are now what is harming American workers the most. That’s hardly anything to celebrate. Make no mistake: Workers’ rights based on the principles of free association and personal property are essential to a just society, but our public reverence for this dying movement is at best obsolete and at worst completely misguided.

Meanwhile, federal, state, and local governments as well as the private sector could do our republic and its future at least a symbolic service by having our three-day September weekend to coincide with Constitution Day on September 17.

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An easy way to see what a society truly values is to look at what it publicly reveres. Take a look at the other holidays we rightly celebrate: for our independence on July 4, for our fallen every Memorial Day, and for our veterans on November 11. Does our Constitution not deserve at least a fraction of the same reverence?

Naturally there’s the reality that, eventually, a Constitution Day weekend would require the same amount of public prodding as does Memorial Day to remind people of the day’s importance. But even that would be a much better problem to have than our current September holiday disparity.

Taking a single day out of the year to appreciate the document that established our republic obviously wouldn’t reverse the anti-constitutional trends that permeate nearly every level and branch of government in the U.S., but it certainly couldn’t hurt.

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  • Consistent #9747

    slhancock1948 #9752

    Yes. Why celebrate Marxism and it’s iron-toed boots? I know that there was once a need for unions, but they have outlasted their purpose and now they do more to destroy the companies that are left than to negotiate fair work practice.

    Pray for righteousness to be restored and for the peace of Jerusalem

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