This past Labor Day holiday, Homer lefties were out protesting Donald Trump again. A small group of people who looked like geriatric hippies gathered at the busiest intersection in town and held up protest signs that were probably left over from their last protest rally on May Day.

Supposedly, they were supporting unions to celebrate Labor Day, but judging by the signs, their main issue was anger at President Trump and disagreement with his policies. However, Donald Trump isn’t their biggest problem. They, and the unions they support, are facing extinction.

Labor Day wasn’t always divisive like this. Back in 1894, after a decade of labor strife divided the country, President Cleveland declared the first Monday in September a federal holiday intended to foster reconciliation between the union workers and employers. The president encouraged everyone, workers and employers alike, to hold parades and gather together in picnics to forget the differences between them.

What began over 100 years ago as a holiday of reconciliation is now being used by leftists to attack the president and his policies. The idea of reconciliation seems to have gone out the window. My, how times have changed.

Unfortunately for the lefties, union membership isn’t as popular in this country as it once was. According to Statista, union membership has been declining for the past 40 years, and only 10% of American workers currently belong to one. There are many reasons for that drop. Some of the employer concessions that labor unions fought for back in the 1880s, such as the 8-hour workday, have now been enshrined into law. It is difficult for unions to deliver “member benefits,” which are already available to non-union employees. As a consequence, many workers see no value in paying union dues.

Another reason for the decline is that many unions have become too politicized. In the last session of the Alaska legislature, NEA-Alaska lobbied for bills that supported their membership without regard for the cost to the rest of the state. NEA-Alaska is the local teachers’ union, with 13,000 members in Alaska, and many legislators are quick to do their bidding.

At the national level, a recent report documented that the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers have contributed $43.5 million to left-wing groups over the past 3 years to advance leftist policies. A union member holding conservative political beliefs might not want their union dues to help advance a liberal agenda that doesn’t agree with his or her politics.

Not only is union membership declining, but the number of liberals in this country is also dropping. A recent study by AMAC made an analogy of today’s progressives to the Shaker movement from back in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Shakers were a religious order that believed in celibacy. They were popular for a time, but their movement eventually ended because with their low birth rates, they couldn’t replace themselves except by recruiting new members.

The Shaker comparison can be made between today’s liberals and conservatives. According to the AMAC study, conservatives in the United States have a much higher birth rate than liberals do. If this trend continues, liberals won’t be able to replace themselves with their own children growing up in their left-leaning households. That means the political left, like the Shakers, will have to resort to recruitment to get new members. This helps explain why Democrats support mandated leftist ideologies in schools and public institutions. Things like Drag Queen story hour in libraries and transgender boys playing in girls’ sports leagues may be attempts to recruit new kids into a declining left-wing ideology.

Whatever the left is doing, it isn’t working. According to a recent Gallup poll, Gen Z teens identify as more conservative and at higher rates than millennials did 20 years ago. Young people are rejecting the political left and returning to more traditional values. It appears that liberalism is a dying philosophy.

The protest held in Homer on Monday confirms it. There were no children or young adults present. The crowd was made up of what looked like older, retired people. Seeing them chant old protest slogans from the ’60s and ’70s, I actually felt a bit of sadness for them. They are the last of a dying generation of hippies. They are old and getting older, and kids today do not support their political views. As annoying as the Homer lefties are, they are like fading flowers in fall. It will be sad to see them go.

The views expressed here are those of Greg Sarber. Read more Sarber posts at his Seward’s Folly substack.

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