Richard Trumka stands at the podium like a man with his foot in the doorway of history, relaxed and confident and grinning at the audience. Wisconsin? The attempted murder of public unions? That was actually a win, he says.

A big beefy guy with a bristling mustache and Blagojevich hair, Trumka started life as a coal miner. His grandfather was a union man. His father was a union man. He became a union man and put himself through college on the midnight shift, leading many bitter strikes in the coal patch where rock-throwing miners confronted guards with machine guns, scenes from an epic American history few people remember. Two years ago he rose to the top of the American labor movement, president of the AFL-CIO, where he represents twelve million firefighters, teachers, nurses, miners, electricians, and entertainers. He came in with a lifetime's worth of dreams for reviving labor and saving America. So when Governor Scott Walker this year took away the right of collective bargaining for government workers in Wisconsin, the law of the land for seventy-five years, Walker didn't just aim a dagger straight at the heart of American labor, he aimed it at Rich Trumka's heart.

But Trumka is grinning. "We've been trying for three decades to get a national debate on collective bargaining. Scott Walker gave us the national debate we were looking for."

By national debate he means thousands of angry citizens marching in the street. Occupying the state capitol. Mounting recall elections. That's the kind of national debate Trumka thinks America needs.

"Now 70-some percent of Americans think every worker, public or private, ought to have the right to collective bargaining."

So would you support going after Walker?

Trumka doesn't hesitate. "Would I support going after Lucifer? Of course — the guy's been a bad governor, he tried to use a contrived deficit to take people out."

Within hours, this will be denounced as hate speech on right-wing blogs.

And the Oc...