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.
Rove...you stupid bastard.....
Not me. We should take as many Mexicans as we can handle. But we should incorporate them into our society, teach them the language, culture and civic responsibilities, and give them an equal stake in our country.
I bet Chelsea Clinton never picked tomatoes or made hotel beds, either.
Not only will Karl Rove's kid not pick tomatoes or make beds, but he also won't ever wear a military uniform. That kind of work is beneath Rove's class and will have to be done by others.
It is such irony that Rove's standard retort to all those who oppose amnesty and open borders is "you hate brown people". Yet with these now verfied comments (Rove concurred on the evening news) it is revealed that Rove himself is the one who considers brown people subhuman.
What is sad here is that this attitude by the elites transcends parties - you see it in Rove, and Pelosi, and Kerry and the pundits. They rule and it is for the rest of you to clean up after them. Compare the attitude of Rove to that of Reagan. Rove's comments reveal that with no change in the Republican ruling class attitudes or people, the party will alienate itself from the American majority of plain folks. Rove and his family won't pick those tomatoes or make those beds or serve in the military, but they are few. The people who do and their families are the many.
2008 will be a disaster. Sad, because the Democrat elites are just as bad.
It's time for a People's Party. Rove need not apply.
Speak for yourself: I get my hands greasy on a daily basis.
And I'm making just over $100K per annumNot real welath, but it does put food on the table.
"What is hard working, family-oriented, industrious, or Christian aout this?"
Look, I'm not defending anything, just speaking the truth. (I'm in Texas, and the Hispanic culture is prevalent here. I know what I'm talking about.) It's not politically correct, but here goes:
Hard working and industrious: They work their butts off, often as day laborers and at menial jobs, and their work ethic is one any employer would want. The kids drop out of school as soon as the law allows and work jobs to help support the family. That's a BIG problem for public schools, which are then held accountable for a dropout rate that they have little control over. But these guys do work hard.
Family oriented: big, extended families, often multi-generational, living together and looking out for each other. The out-of-wedlock birth rate is affecting all demographic groups, and it's sad. But the Hispanic girls keep the babies instead of killing them before they're born.
Christian: they may be breeding out of wedlock, but they're at mass on Sundays. They are overwhelmingly Catholic which, whatever your religious views, is solidly in the "Christian" column demographically.
I'm not defending anything, just telling it like it is, from first-hand experience.
And I forgot to mention that they're also dying in Iraq in significant numbers. Check it out.
Thereby proving the point I made in Post 84. Rove wants these brown people here not out of Christian love, but to keep his son from picking tomatoes, making beds, and dying in Iraq.
, Since 73% of the agricultural workers are NOT hispanic, and 84% of the bed makers (service industry) are NOT hispanic, and 87% of the military are NOT hispanic, Rove apparently thinks his kid is better than a lot of plain old average Americans.
I tried waving the snakes away and they totally ignored
me. Must lack gravitas...
It is repulsive, and Rove's statement is repulsive on so many levels: 1) that doing physical work as a teenager is demeaning, 2) that those that do so work are being demeaned, and Americans should not have to do it, 3) that this "Americans should not have to be demeaned" is the rationale to increase the number of unskilled immigrants, and 4) that this rationale is what is really behind the Bush's in the end let them stay program, rather than keeping wages low in such jobs, and 5) that the policy had nothing to do with Bush's political calculations, calculations that have proved errant.
Of course, next to nobody pays attention to what Rove says anymore, and fewer and fewer are paying any attention to what Bush says.
Give it 2-3 more decades, and they will be properly trained by our white liberals in the liberal sacrament of "Abortion for Convenience."
So more and more of these anchor babies are being born to: 1.)suck up resources, 2.)not es-speak ingles, and 3.)not assimilate into the Un-tied States. While karl Rove's kid may or may not even get married, let alone have 2-3 kids, OUR chiildren are being replaced by foriegn kids with no allegiance to our nation. If your Grandfather gave you an axe, and you replace the handle twice and the blade once, it is still your grandfather's axe? Will it still be our country? I doubt it.
Certainly I'm concerned about assimilation. I want that to be the cornerstone of our new immigration policy. When I give amnesty to illegals, it's going to be ONLY to those illegals that have integrated themselves into our communities, have learned our language, and have made every effort to be part of OUR society, and not a satellite branch of their home countries.
I used to grow my own tomatoes. But I don't really eat tomatoes, so I stopped.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/02/white_house_red.html
"White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino told ABC News that the White House does not deny that Rove made the remark but claims it has been taken out of context."
Uh huh.
Why the heck do Mexicans get priority? I would MUCH prefer some people from a part of the world which appreciates the U.S., and where they don't have an entitlement mentality. I hear Poland is one such place.
I caught a couple and tossed them aside. After that they ran when they heard me coming.
Fewer kids = fewer kids cutting grass. The problem will get worse over time as you need people to staff both the professional level and the grunt work jobs.
Interesting that on a conservative web site, you have to explain to people the concept of division of labor.
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