Picking Tomatoes Is for Those Mexicans, Not Karl Rove's Son
Technorati Tags: Karl Rove, picking tomatoes, illegal immigrants, Pres. Bush's amnesty immigration plan, Mexican farmworkers
Yesterday, Karl Rove explained his reason for supporting Pres. Bush's amnesty immigration plan: "I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas."
Mark Krikorian at National Review Online's The Corner was not amused:
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.
It must be a blue moon out tonight: I agree with NRO.
1 comment:
I would not usually agree with the NRO either, but this time, they make a good point. That was one of the lessons my parents taught me earlier on, that there was no job that was too low or beneath us. It seems some people never learned that lesson. Then again, I get the feeling Mr. Cheney has not read de Tocqueville recently.
Post a Comment