I notice that defensive union supporters quickly resort to the time period covered by the Labor Department’s now famous mural as they seek to burnish the image of the present-day labor union movement. And well they should!

Back in the day, unions had an honorable and necessary role to play in the economy of this nation. We’re much the better as a country because of the sacrifices and struggle which characterized the early days of the union movement.

I also notice that unions do not much mention what they’ve been up to since, oh, World War II or so. Instead, unions present claim honor due unions past.

Unions, like the early Christian Church, suffered a moral decline once brought into the halls of power. The Roman Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Tolerance did more to hobble the Church than any persecution.

Likewise, President Franklin Roosevelt’s embrace of unions on behalf of the Democratic Party did more to ruin their integrity than violent corporate strikebreaking tactics.

Removing the mural may seem petty, but I see the removal as fair notice that the past is the past and the present is the present.

Unions now hang upon the economy and upon our nation’s politics like so many albatrosses ’round the neck of the Ancient Mariner.

Let’s put artistic depictions of the union movement’s proud history where they belong: in a museum, not in the offices of a department of government which now must objectively regulate the excesses of its bloated and selfish present-day version.

Lenny Hoy, Greenwood