Civic virtue and Karl Rove's son

Washing dishes was one of the most rewarding jobs I've had.

My parents made me buy my auto by working for it as a busboy, waiter and dishwasher. It was the best thing that could have happened to me. Once I left high school, I never needed to ask them for money. I could take care of myself. One of the biggest fears I have about open-borders bills is that the same opportunity won't be around for my son when he's a teenager.

Did Rove really say this? Did he mean that he doesn't want his 17 year old son working that kind of job forever?
Seems to me about the only people you get to work these jobs are 17 year olds and immigrants, maybe that was his point.....A 17 year old cetainly aspires to more than garbage collector, but only 17 year olds are working as garbage collectors.

I'm not surprised that he thinks that way. However, considering what a political mastermind he's supposed to be, I'm surprised that he would say it. My parents were both blue collar workers. It doesn't mean that our family was poor. Unions and manufacturing were strong, so we did pretty well. Food, clothes, shelter, health insurance, and public schooling were all available, so we had little needs.(Am I sounding like the Kingfish?) My parents always knew that the elite within the GOP looked down upon them. This wouldn't come as a surprise to them. The thing that they find to be the most perplexing in that working people vote for them. I won't say what my Dad says about them(working people who vote GOP)because it's a violation of b-net rules. I think that my parents are really proud that me and my brothers haven't sold out. We vote Republican now and then(as do my parents), but we do it with caution & always remember that we owe our economic rise in life to the people who stood up in America for the little guy. We owe it to the people who supported public education. We owe it to the people who said that we deserved a living wage and health care.
We worked. Paper route, picking strawberries,& babysitting brought in the best money.
My brother is a VP of a major corporation. He has/had a strong work ethic. His kids didn't get that, and he forgot to teach it. He admits that buying them what they want and not making them work for much was a mistake. His son is a young Republican(or whatever it's called). He never learned about his roots. I don't know that he has empathy for working people.
I'm hoping to teach my children better. We'll see how it works.

The notion of Karl Rove as some Darth Sidious-level of political genius never did hold much water, and this helps prove it. I'm fairly pro-immigration, but Rove's words reveal an aloof man of arrogance - just the sort of person we don't need advising Bush.
But I must agree with this: Whole occupations have been deemed unfit for respctable--read white-people for generations. Tomato picking and hotel room cleaning has not been done by people like Kirkorian--or their kids--for generations. The anti-immigration crowd on the Right has been opening up a Pandora's box of emotional rhetoric when they talk about "elite," smoking cigars and reading the WSJ, selling out the workin' man. Here in Orange County, I'd listen to middle class women in their 50s insisting in all seriousness that, yes, they'd pick lettuce if only they got paid enough for it. Strange brew, coming from people who were celebrating free trade just a few years back. Listening to all this newfound-populism is a little tiresome to someone of my background (Hispanic with solidly blue-collar parents). I'd much rather listen to people who present realistic solutions to immigration as opposed to those insisting on creating class resentment within the Republican Pary.

I'm more sympathetic to the hispanic population in our borders than most, but I do hate that rationale: "They're doing jobs americans won't do." BS. I spent a good deal of time doing crap jobs in high school and college at horrible hours, gross and sweaty and such. Americans would do these jobs and gladly. Someone above said this was 'projection' and s/he's right: this is prissy elites fretting about maybe seeing where their food comes from.

From Susan S.: Tomato picking and hotel room cleaning has not been done by people like Kirkorian--or their kids--for generations. First, Krikorian has been going on about this for quite some time. He hasn't just recently noticed it. As for tomato picking, it was mechanized after the Bracero program was shut down. Hotel cleaning has and still is done by whites. There are hotels in states with very small minority populations, and they have to function. This is what happens when you tighten the labor supply. The work is either mechanized or it begins to pay better. This is the big advantage the U.S. had in the 19th century. Even with immigrant inflows, our labor supply was tight, and it forced manufacturer's to innovate and improve products and working conditions. In Britain, OTOH, labor was plentiful, so there was less inducement to make capital investment, and the country fell behind. From Dan: I'd much rather listen to people who present realistic solutions to immigration as opposed to those insisting on creating class resentment within the Republican Pary. The only realistic solution will put enforcement before any kind of amnesty. We already tried the amnesty first option in '86, and it made the problem even worse. As much as they're vilified for it, the House GOP was largely right in this. One can quibble over things like the "felony provision", which Sensenbrenner himself would have removed, but the general direction was correct.

I wish at least one of George H. W. Bush's sons was picking tomatoes for a living (though I'm not sure I'd trust him to make a bed properly).

Ok, first my bona fides. I had my share of "crap" jobs as a middle class youngster in Virginia and California, jobs whose pain and suffering quotients increase with the passage of time, the number of recollections, and the depth of the scotch in the glass -- as I suspect is the case with Mark Krikorian at least (I won't speak for Rod, since having also done physical labor in Louisiana I am certain he sweated actual sweat in his dad's trailer park). I carry no torch for Karl Rove, but I think his remarks have been mischaracterized in Krikorian's constant pursuit of anti-immigration polemics. From an empirical standpoint, I think if someone actually undertook a socioeconomic study, they would be likely to find that middle-class kids today are just about as likely as they were when we were cubs to be schlepping garbage cans like Rod, working a retain receiving dock like I did, or -- my favorite -- stringing barbed wire alongside state highways in Mississippi like a former work colleague of mine (now the land manager for a successful mid-sized oil company). For most of them -- like I recall in my case -- the drudgery of the work was generally compensated for by daydreaming of what one planned to do with the gas money, or the concert-ticket money, or the college rent money one hoped to accumulate. And, if any of us were truly honest, rather than romanticizing ourselves as noble characters out of Studs Terkel, we would admit that in addition to noble lessons of a hard day's work for a fair day's pay, we also learned useful lessons about work avoidance, burden minimization, and general pacing of life that have stood us in good stead as adults. For kids who don't hold such jobs, the likely reason is that they are programmed to the hilt, and sentenced (or assigned) to other activities to refine their intellectual, musical, athletic, artistic, or other talents -- or perceived talents. The marketplace for what constitutes "personal and civic virtues needed for self-government" has changed, due to a whole array of factors. I will make the argument that in a great many homes, the application of sweat equity into improving one's skills, college aptitudes or whatever forms the equivalent of the supposed life lessons some of us claim to have received because we once worked by the sweat of our brows. I'm not saying one approach is better than the other. But I think sensible parents and teachable children can gain useful lessons from either approach. If that leaves me ignoring the children of the indolent and affluent who spend their summers at country clubs while Nicaraguans mow their lawns, well, to paraphrase an often misquoted and mis-applied section of Scripture: "The rich we have always with us". I think if someone really worked the data, they would find that the reason we need workers is not because little Johnny or little Sally refuse to work in the Ventura County strawberry fields or the Central Florida tomato farms, but because we simply have fewer laborers than we once did for labor we still expect to have performed. We can address that need through immigrant labor, or we can address that need through automation and invention of crop-picking devices we don't have yet, but the idea that the need exists because we're not busing our middle class teenagers off to rural America like so many Venceremos Brigades is poppycock on stilts, like most of what Mr. Krikorian writes.

Wow. You really touched a nerve, Rod. It really pisses people off if anyone who doesn't share their liberal views takes issue with the corporate welfare program known as Open Borders.
Liberals are funny. Disagree with them, the spit on you. Agree with you, they spit on you twice.

AMEN, Rod and Mark.

"It really pisses people off if anyone who doesn't share their liberal views takes issue with the corporate welfare program known as Open Borders." If only corporate welfare was what was driving opponents to comprehensive immigration reform. Sadly, Kirkorian would jump on the first corporate giveaway he could, as long as it didn't involve immigrants. The opposition to comprehensive immigration reform has LARGELY NOTHING to do with corporate welfare and everything to do with an isolationist, terrorist-alarmist, general antipathy to anything that's not "true blue" American.

Add one more to the list of current educated, white-collar workers who is glad as heck his parents made him do manual labor growing up. I worked as a house painter every summer from 13 (I was a big, pretty mature kid so my parents and my employer broke labor laws for a year) until 22, except the summer I spent on a fish trawler raping the seas around Alaska. I can say I know how to work hard and know the value of labor from these experiences. Rove's son is being done a great disservice, and Rove is a fool for not allowing him to get his hands dirty for a few sweaty summers.

Rod: "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" I would posit that what is making society worse is people like you, Rod, who insult people who lack legal status in this country and would deny them legalization so that they can be on equal footing to negotiate better wages.

White House has confirmed Rove's comment. Claims it was taken out of context. Also blames Mark Krikorkian of Neoconservative Review Online for informing the public (i.e. straying off message) about Mr. Rove's comment. Prediction: Mr. Krikorian will lose his White House Magic Decoder Ring. Emphasis on why hard manual labor in youth benefits an adult: Jonah Goldberg and John P. Normanson, neither of whom ever worked a day in their lives.

John Miller, We can't read your opinion following confirmation of Mr. Rove's comment. John Miller, where are you? John Miller, have Uncle Bill and Brother Lowry silenced you on this one? Type up, son. Type up.

Porta-potties, huh? I can't even begin to top that one.
I did, however, have a series of manual labor jobs while in high-school and college. Now that I'm a lawyer, I look back on those days with unalloyed envy. My dad was a blue-collar Democrat, and a labor organizer. I grew up in a house where the phrase "working-man" was regularly employed with the same sort of semi-reverential tone that Catholics once reserved for the word "Father".
Though my dad was a blue-collar guy, he was also an intellectual. I remember very well the time he brought me a copy of The New Republic and proudly showed me an article on JFK, written by a personal friend of his. Of course, this meant that I registered Republican just as fast as I possibly could. I came of age during the Reagan-Bush campaign of 1980 and I was solidly a conservative Republican all my life -- until George W. Bush was nominated and I turned away in disgust. I'm older now -- entering middle-age and my father has been gone for over ten years. He did not live to see me graduate from law-school, but I know that he would be proud of the work I do representing the poor and the lower-middle class. Because of their love affair with death and sodomy, I could never bring myself to register as a Democrat. But I find myself in agreement with my father's politics more and more these days. I've come to find that the Republican party is just a bad joke - they have no intention of doing anything more than giving lip-service to their platform ideals. Thank God for that, at least.

Unduly-Verbose Franklin- No one is against regulated legal immigration. Take your strawman for a long walk off a short pier. There was a time before 1986 that construction crews were stocked with working poor and college kids, planning their projects, even in Manhattan,around that. Everyone I knew had such an ebtry level job-washing dishes, busing and waiting tables, lawn care, construction, fast food.Or in my case,several of them over high school and college. Heaven forfend Rove's son hands get dirty or he works a weekend or evening. Those jobs made you understand the little but important things-work ethic, dealing with the public, being presentable, and so forth, that Rove's kids are unlikely to ever understand. We are a better society for all that. Nobody sprouts as fully-formed as a 35-year old(except dry drunkard fratboy presidents, apparently). And yet the imbecilic Bush Error would dismantle that socialization, and abandon the working poor(many of them black) already here who would also do such work.
Cheap luettuce uber alles!For the sake of cheap lettuce and cheap construction, Bush will throw all of that good overboard. And we'll have more unskilled uneducated (and often criminals, since their very firsta ct is a crime, what's a few more-another thread, another day) on the underside of our country. How anyone squares exploiting these poor folks with "Christianity" is a logical piece of gymnastics I'd love to see, but haven't yet. At it's core, some young, uneducated Mexican lad should be treated like a production input to spare the Rove boy of the total horror of coming home smelling like french fry grease at 2AM on Saturday night-as I did for years.
Each day the fact I voted for this bunch of prissy focus-group jerkoffs twice makes me angrier. I embarrassed, ashamed, disgusted. This Administration had convinced me they're all whores. Just have Karl Rove put up some lipstick on the pig at election time and they really believe they can lie to us about anything.

Bugg, I'm happy to have you disagree with me, but you should revisit the definition of strawman argument. Me, I'd rather go fishing. The current policies force law-abiding, educated and skilled individuals to wait years for a resident-alien visa. The current policies do not address* the economic necessities on both sides of illegal immigration. No one wants to discuss funding cuts in support programs, like language acquisition. If you can find something sane actually being done around immigration, I'd like you to point it out to me. I could use some good news today. * "Address", in my usage, means actual actions taken. The most "activity" I can see around immigration is the hot air from too much talking... as I suppose I should not be calling the kettle black, eh Bugg? ;)

2 simple things, my unduly-wordy friend- Admittedly, wae aren't deporting 15 million people next week. But- First, workplace enforcement of ss# verification with stiff fines for employers who don't comply, jail terms for those repeatedly making such errors. That would by attrition send many illegals back and discourage future illegals coming. And second, border enforcement ASAP. Neither would be complicated or difficult, but they would require more leadership than we're getting right now.

Bugg, while I would stop short of labelling your suggestions as unsane, they do fall short of some practical considerations. SSN enforcement sounds good on paper, but the US has a large and thriving underground market. It's extent is unknown but indications of it can be found just about everywhere. Undocumented farm workers is just the most visible indication. How may enforcement officers would it take, do you think, to patrol every farm in every state? Even limiting that to the states closest to the Mexican border, the answer is far more than are available now or could be trained in less than a matter of months, and that assumes that there'd be enough qualified candidates for the training. That and a "secure" border begs the questions: do you know how much money it would require, and do you have any idea where that money could be found? That is the answer that the powers-that-be refuse to face, and are desparate to avoid discussing. The alternative, engaging Mexico (and, to a lesser extent, other countries) in a cooperative process, is not politically expedient, certainly not for many of those who also call for stricter border enforcement.

You could have a biometric ID card, which, suprisingly, Senator Schumer(of whom I am not a big fan) has proposed. When NY City took to fingerprinting for welfare benefits during Guiliani's term, not suprisingly, numerous previous recipients DISAPPEARED.
As to the cost and expense of border enforcement, I have to ask-what is the cost and expense of health care, criminality, educational expenses and other social services to illegals already here? I'd hazard a bet that the soceital costs of those things far outweigh a border and it's enforcement. Plus we've never really tried it.
Simply, it takes leadeship, telling various interests the party is over and we're done paying for it. Either we, as a "nation of laws", have laws that really mean what they say, or we're a banana republic. By Franklin's logic, just get rid of penal and tax laws while you're at it; people rountinely violate them, so why have them at all?

Timbuktoo: I would posit that what is making society worse is people like you, Rod, who insult people who lack legal status in this country and would deny them legalization so that they can be on equal footing to negotiate better wages. Would you say that the person who broke into your house and became a squatter is not, in fact, a lawbreaker, but simply "lacks legal status" to be in your house -- and that you are obliged to grant him permission to stay there?

Rod, you are searching for alternate ways to state the case, and I do want to read the case, but if you are looking to start an argument about the moral implications of immigrants taking away the land of those who live on it, I know some Native Americans you might like to chat with. But like tovart writes, your analogy does not exist, let alone break down. That's not necessarily a criticism, since I'm at a loss to come up with an analogy to replace it.

Anyone who can write the words "virtue" and "Karl Rove" in the same sentence deserves an award for comedy writing.

"Would you say that the person who broke into your house and became a squatter is not, in fact, a lawbreaker, but simply "lacks legal status" to be in your house -- and that you are obliged to grant him permission to stay there? Rod Dreher" One other thought, Rod, on this point. One time I wrote that you should have opposed ab initio the war b/c the Pope did. You quickly wrote back that I did not understand the nuances of Catholic theology b/c the Pope had not made this as an infallible statement or something like that. Forgive the imprecision. I'm not Catholic. Well, the same can be said to you in this instance. Look up the legal definition of squatters and you will quickly see that such legal terminology can in now way apply to undocumented immigrants. Thought that you might appreciate the precision, Rod, since you're quick to make sure others don't make errors of that type.