Quote of the Day on Elitism

"I don't want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes or make beds in Las Vegas." ~Karl Rove

It's not often I find myself quoting The Corner approvingly, but although I disagree with the basic premise of this piece in using the quote to excuse a racist anti-immigration stance, Mark Krikorian gets one point right.

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.

The thing is, this is precisely the elitist mindset that permeates today's GOP from the president right on down the line. They harp on "limousine Liberals" while pretending to care about ordinary citizens but the truth is they hold the working class in utter contempt and they've deliberately raised their children, many of whom are now "leading" the country, to believe they are above the underclasses. That they're entitled and expected to take advantage of the suckers who work long hours at hard labor to make their money.

It's this sense of entitlement that forms the heart of materialistic conservatism and allows them to declare with a straight face that an economy that has greatly increased the class divide is a good thing for the country as a whole.