There is so much I can say about the Wisconsin protests. But I will leave it to Arnold Alhert, who explains in great deal how insane this whole thing is. It is well word reading.

Wisconsin: Progressivism in All its Ugly Glory (JWR)

By the time you read this, we will all have been "Wisconsin-ed" up to our eyeballs. Yet when one cuts through all the blather--the worst of which is ludicrous attempt by our thoroughly debauched media to portray fleeing Democrats Senators as "heroes"--what we are seeing is the first serious campaigning for the 2012 election. The battle lines couldn't be clearer: either the public will wrest this country back from the serial abusers for whom no government deficits are too large, no compensation packages too lavish and no special interest groups are too special, or we will all become vassals of their self-righteous, progressive tyranny.

Don't think for a second that the appearance in Wisconsin of the Democratic National Committee, along with Barack Obama's Organizing for America, is merely a show of "solidarity" with the "oppressed" public service employees. Wisconsin has become Ground Zero for a progressive movement quite comfortable with the use of intimidation, threats of harm and precisely the same hateful rhetoric they accuse conservatives of perpetrating whenever that particular bit of hypocrisy suits their purposes.

To put it succinctly, progressivism is all about the ends justifying the means. Once one understands that, everything else becomes clear. It makes it easy to understand why the same president who reminded Republicans that "I won" as the singular justification to implement his agenda, is taking the side of cowardly Wisconsin Democrat Senators who have made it clear that winning only counts when their side is victorious. It makes it just as easy to understand why a mainstream media which no longer makes even a cursory attempt to maintain their integrity will never ask that president how he could align himself with those who willingly abandon the bedrock process of our democratic republic.

It makes it easy to understand why the same media which laughably refers to the protests as our "Egyptian moment" can willfully ignore the reality that Egyptian protesters were rallying for democracy while those in Wisconsin want democracy subverted. It makes it easy to understand why they did everything they could to find evidence of hate within the Tea Party movement--to the point of lying about it as they did when they claimed racial slurs were directed at members of Congressional Black Caucus outside the Capitol last year--even as they studiously ignore blatant manifestations of hatred directed at Governor Walker and Republicans in Wisconsin.

Here's something else they've studiously ignored: at a March 2, 2010 meeting of the Milwaukee School Board, Deb Wegner, Manager of Financial Planning in that city, revealed that the 2011 average annual salary for a teacher there would be maintained at the 2010 level--of $56,500. When benefits are factored in? Teachers total compensation was projected to rise--from $95,316 to $100,005. Average median income in Milwaukee from 2006-2008, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau?

Just over $19,000.

That's something worth remembering while teachers are being portrayed as victims. It's also worth remembering many of those same teachers had no qualms whatsoever, not only about ditching school for three days last week forcing many of them to close, but dragging along some of their students to protest as well. For progressives, no one, not even children, are exempt from being used to further their ends.

This is one American who couldn't be happier with the current developments. From the president's characterization of the attempt by Wisconsin to reign in the excess of public sector unions as an "assault," to Rep. Nancy Pelosi "standing in solidarity" with those who have nothing but contempt for the will of the taxpaying majority, the ugly face of progressivism is being brought into an unprecedented level of focus.

For years, Democrats, their media enablers and their special interest groups have been able to mask their utter contempt for the American public (hopelessly stupid), the Constitution (completely elastic) and American exceptionalism (jingoistic hogwash). In 2008, the facade was partially removed when they arrogantly believed they would, as James Carville put it, "rule for forty years."

In 2011, arrogance has given way to fear, and what we're seeing in Wisconsin is the further unmasking of a progressive movement fighting for survival. We are seeing the president who ran as the great uniter being revealed for the class-war-faring, community organizing rabble-rouser has has always been. We are seeing the unbridled sense of entitlement of public service employees who would run every state in the country into bankruptcy--as long as they get theirs. We are seeing the unmitigated gall of Democratic legislators who would violate their oath of office without an ounce of remorse. We are witnessing a corrupt media once again trying to manipulate an American public increasingly aware and scornful of such attempts.

Between now and 2012, Americans should prepare themselves for a level of hatred, lying, character assassination, and quite possibly violence that will arise when those long used to getting their way are challenged as they have never been before. The Takers--from the crony capitalists on top to the rapacious public service unions in the middle, to the entitlement crowd and their community shakedown artists and racial hucksters on the bottom--know they are in trouble.

And they are in trouble for a very simple reason: the heart of progressivism is indecency. It is an indecency which seeks first to divide Americans and then conquer them--for our own good. It is an indecency which sees every American, not as as individual, but as a cog in a giant socialist machine that is supposed to take us to Utopia. It is an indecency which sees self-interest and selfishness as one and the same, talent as something to be exploited, and individual ambition as something to be tethered to the "greater good." If democracy or the rule of law becomes an impediment along the way, it is to be intimidated, demonstrated against, deliberately mis-characterized by the media--and ignored by the Justice Department, the czars, and answer-to-no-one-but-the-president bureaucrats.

The demonstrators in Wisconsin are "Egyptians?" Try Greeks. Try rioting French and English youths. Try the millions of self-entitled workers in Europe whose own gravy train has run out of gravy. Heroes? Even a hero sandwich has more class than this rabble, and the bet here is most decent Americans know it.

And I'm betting they'll say so in no uncertain terms in 2012.