Posted on 02/09/2007 11:45:59 AM PST by bondjamesbond
According to a congressman's wife who attended a Republican women's luncheon yesterday, Karl Rove explained the rationale behind the president's amnesty/open-borders proposal this way: "I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."
There should be no need to explain why this is an obscene statement coming from a leader in the party that promotes the virtues of hard work, thrift, and sobriety, a party whose demi-god actually split fence rails as a young man, a party where "respectable Republican cloth coat" once actually meant something. But it does seem to be necessary to explain.
Rove's comment illustrates how the Bush-McCain-Giuliani-Hagel-Martinez-Brownback-Huckabee approach to immigration strikes at the very heart of self-government. It is precisely Rove's son (and my own, and those of the rest of us in the educated elite) who should work picking tomatoes or making beds, or washing restaurant dishes, or mowing lawns, especially when they're young, to help them develop some of the personal and civic virtues needed for self-government. It's not that I want my kids to make careers of picking tomatoes; Mexican farmworkers don't want that either. But we must inculcate in our children, especially those likely to go on to high-paying occupations, that there is no such thing as work that is beneath them.
As Tocqueville wrote: "In the United States professions are more or less laborious, more or less profitable; but they are never either high or low: every honest calling is honorable." The farther we move from that notion, the closer we come to the idea that the lawyer is somehow better than the parking-lot attendant, undercutting the very foundation of republican government.
This is why the president's "willing worker/willing employer" immigration extravaganza is morally wrong — it's not just that it will cost taxpayers untold billions, or that it will beggar our own blue-collar workers, or that it will compromise security, or that it will further dissolve our sovereignty. It would do all that, of course, but most importantly it would change the very nature of our society for the worse, creating whole occupations deemed to be unfit for respectable Americans, for which little brown people have to be imported from abroad. In other words, mass immigration, even now, is moving us toward an unequal, master-servant society.
To borrow from Lincoln, our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Saudi Arabia, for instance.
"According to a congressman's wife..."
This needs both source and context.
Translation: "I want someone else's son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."
Yes, and most Americans at some time in their lives (except the very rich) work at menial or unskilled labor jobs. It makes you appreciate your job later in life when you use your mind rather than muscle.
As if Karl Rove's kid would actually be doing this if the illegals weren't here right now.
There's something that I find rather repulsive in this attitude among America's elites today that honest-to-goodness work is demeaning and something to be avoided at all costs, even for young teenagers.
True.
Unfortunately, even without this gossip the actions of the Washington elite give evidence of this attitude.
I'd like to know what context the statement made by Rove was taken from. This could be a case of selective editing - if not then Rove should be ashamed. This smacks of centuries ago when black slaves did the menial work. We've all seen how well that turned out. . . .
Resorting to unnamed and/or anonymous sources is sloppy journalism at best and downright lying at worst. There is no need for this because the Secure Border/Anti-Illegal Immigration crowd is correct on the issues.
I went to MIT, got a degree there and a more advanced one somewhere else, and these days I make a pretty good dollar.
I also spent time crawling around in the tall grass underneath my uncle's apple trees waving away the snakes and hornets picking up dropped apples to be made into cider for 10 cents a bushel.
I also spent time in a meat market scraping up meat and fat scraps off the floor with a metal scraper and cleaning out every fleck of meat and bone out of all the grinding and cutting machines with bleach evenings.
Those and other such jobs made damn sure I appreciated being at MIT, and made sure that when I speak and act and vote I remember my Dad's words, that any honest living is a respectable and honorable one.
As if Karl Rove's kid would actually be doing this if the illegals weren't here right now.
That is the LAST place you will find ANY of the elite politicians' children working.
I on the other hand worked for years in a potato packing shed and then later put myself through college tending bar.
I am soooooo glad to know that I shouldn't have been doing either job, that they should be left to illegal immigrants.
If it weren't for those jobs where the heck would I have started Karl Rove?
Ignoramuses,every single one of them.
I want big-time confirmation that this was said. Sworn statements and tape recordings would be appropriate here. With all the half-assed republicans we have in Congress now - far less their wives - was should be very wary of taking this type of report at face value.
If he keeps up that arrogant, pompous attitude, he'll earn Pelosi's crown.
Throughout American history the Leftist mindset has provided evidence of this attitude. Our forefathers left Europe to be free of this attitude.
Gossip it is as we haven't a link to read the words of Rove ourselves, but as you state, even without this gossip the actions of the Washington ELITE give evidence.
Mmmmm...methinks that needs a fixin'...
There should be no need to explain why this is an obscene statement coming from a leader in the party that tries to promote an image that it represents the virtues of hard work, thrift, and sobriety...
There. That's better.
Rove, you bastard!
***"According to a congressman's wife..."
This needs both source and context. ***
ABSOLUTELY
Actually, Mr. Krikorian is wrong. The US boom economy has always depended on a large supply of cheap immigrant/slave labor. The only exception to this was the baby boom which was a large group that simulated immigrant cheap labor.
The only difference now is that the US ran out of caucasians to import and now are importing non caucasians.
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