Great Scott!

Conservatives often grouse that Republicans head for the tall grass when the Left starts firing the muskets. So it is rare and heroic that we have a governor in America ?who refuses to wilt under pressure.

This weekend Scott Walker of Wisconsin signed the state's right to work law, a stunning victory for freedom and free markets. The Left threw everything they had at the unflappable governor with mass protests, threats, and accusations of corruption, but he never budged from his principles.

Wisconsin is the third midwestern blue collar state in the last five years, joining Michigan and Indiana, to switch to right to work and away from forced union policies.

My own research with Arthur Laffer for the American Legislative Exchange Council, along with other studies, have found that right-to-work states produce about twice the pace of job growth than in states that are non-right-to-work.

"This was always about bringing new jobs to Wisconsin," the unflappable Mr. Walker tells me. "It's not anti-union, it's pro-jobs."

Yes, and pro-right to choose. This is a law that does not ban unions. Unions are active in right-to-work states already. The law simply prohibits unions from collecting dues without the consent of the workers employed at the worksite.

It also prevents withholding of union dues for political activities that workers may not agree with. All those millions of dollars of TV ads during election season are paid for by union members, many of whom are Republicans themselves.

The Left has taken to lying about right to work. They say no worker is required to join a union.

Try telling workers that. If they don't pay the dues, they can lose their job. So the choice is: pay the union dues or get a pink slip.

But if unions are so beneficial to workers - and in some cases they are - why does Big Labor have to force people against their will to join? The unions have no answer to that.

Why should union members, many of whom are Republicans, have to have money witheld from their paychecks to pay for political campaign donations that trash the GOP?

In Wisconsin, when Mr. Walker took away automatic withholding from worker pay checks, the unions lost more than 75 percent of their money. When workers have a choice, they say no to funding political activities.

Next up for right to work are states like West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and possibly Missouri.

Once upon a time in America workers didn't have the right to join a union. That was unfair. Private sector workers should have the right to collectively bargain.

But today, in half the states today workers don't have the right not to join the union. On Sunday Mr. Walker gave the workers in Wisconsin that basic protection.

?This is a leader who means what he says and says what he means.

How rare.

How exciting.

*?Stephen Moore is an economist at the Heritage Foundation.