alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

February 9, 2007

Credit Where It’s Due

by AltHippo @ 5:47 pm. Filed under Uncategorized

As an occasional critic of NRO’s “The Corner”, or more accurately, a virtually 100% critic of “The Corner,” it’s important to point out where I find some common ground with these vociferous youngsters. Even if it’s just a piece of a larger thought, even if I don’t agree with their point on the whole, at least we have a little something we can agree on.

Take Mark Krikorian, please. This is in response to a Karl Rove comment at a recent wingnut convention where Rove said: “I don’t want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas.” While it’s true that given the current state of political patronage it’s unlikely that Rove’s son will need to make much of an effort for a small fortune in return, I like what Krikorian said:

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’s true that Krikorian uses this to oppose a guest worker program, and it’s there where he and I depart. He’s right that everyone should have the experience of a “menial job.” We also need a guest worker program, or some way for people from other countries to experience life in the US. We also need a way for US citizens to experience life in other countries. That’s a subject for another post, however.

I remember reading in a Freshman year sociology textbook that one of the things that distinguished American society from many other parts of the world is that it was at its ideal a classless society. This is surely one of the meanings behind the phrasing: all men are created equal. Not equal by birth, perhaps, but birth alone should not be too great an advantage, or too great an impediment.

My general observation is that the weight of class membership is heavier, the degree of flexibility is less than I was first out of college. You can see this in things like the ongoing effort to shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. And in the increase of CEO compensation relative to other employees. And from where we draw the soldiers to defend us in terms of war. And even when we go to war- by this I mean how cheaply or dearly we value the lives of soldiers who will be lost.

You even see this in the story of inside the beltway journalism oozing out in gobs from the Scooter Libby trial. Isn’t the common thread with Russert, Woodward, Miller, Cooper, Novak, Mitchell, etc., etc., is that they see themselves as special? They are not like you and me, they are members of a privileged journalism class. The rules just don’t apply to them as they would to you or I.

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One Response to “Credit Where It’s Due”

  1. KathyF Says:
    February 12th, 2007 at 8:41 am

    I once had a job pulling staples. Not as glamourous as picking tomatoes, but it earned me my street cred.

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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

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