
 |
|
February 3, 2012
Edmund Sanders : Israeli official says Iran is creating missile that could reach East Coast of US
Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
January 31, 2012
January 30, 2012
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
Caroline B. Glick: Obama: Of course I intend to prevent a nuclear holocaust . . . in a few months
Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
Jeannine Stein: An inflated ego and thinking you're 'all that' doesn't just make others sick of you, it can make you ill
Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
Ed Koch: To the New York Times, calling for the murder of Jews by those capable of having their incitement taken seriously isn't news
Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
Jordan Rau: In quest to grow, Catholic hospital system will announce this morning its break from church
Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
January 19, 2012
January 18, 2012
January 17, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
David G. Savage: They sued their principals after slandering them online --- now the cases are headed to the Supreme Court
David Francis: Where to Invest in 2012: With stocks expected to rebound, opportunity abounds for investors
January 13, 2012
Ben Lynfield: Israeli lawmakers move to annex Jewish Judea, one museum at a time
Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz: Thriving through touch: Gentle massage helps older people with low mobility improve in mind and body
January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
Warren Richey: Supreme Court says no to new rule on eyewitness testimony
John Fauber : Statins found to raise diabetes risk in postmenopausal women
Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
The Kosher Gourmet by Joseph Erdos: This mushroom and barley soup has an intense -- almost nutty -- flavor that mixes robust with Middle East. It has creaminess without cream
January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
January 6, 2012
January 5, 2012
Tom A. Peter: Taliban talks: In administration's push to negotiate with terrorists, was a key hurdle overlooked?
Pete Spotts: Time cloaking: How scientists opened a hidden gap in time
Karen Kaplan: Teens aren't too old to boost their IQ, study finds
January 4, 2012
Scott Baldauf: Islamist terror group giving Christians living in north Nigeria days to flee
Howard LaFranchi : An accelerating covert war with Iran: Could it spiral into military action?
January 3, 2012
Tom A. Peter: Release several Taliban leaders from Guantanamo Bay; give them headquarters as confidence-building measure?
Elaine Woo: Thomas T. Johnson, L.A. judge who ruled that Holocaust was a fact, dies at 88
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Sept. 6, 2010
/ 27 Elul, 5770
A Labor of Love
By
Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
On this Labor Day, like most Americans, I come to praise labor, not indulge in it. Has there ever been a people that speechified more about the joys and satisfactions of work and the work ethic, yet was so enamored of labor-saving devices?
American efficiency, American organization, and therefore American prosperity has been something of an example around the world -- at least since Henry Ford, that half-genius, half-crank and all-American revolutionary, put the world on wheels. And sagely raised his workers' pay to unheard-of levels ($5 a day!) so they could buy the Model Ts they were making.
A few kinks have developed in the American image since -- like the Great Depression and occasional lapses in that once vaunted made-in-USA craftsmanship. Still, no other system seems to have responded so flexibly to the challenge, mystery and psychological thriller known as the "science" of economics. (To quote Hayek, "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.")
The American attitude toward labor can be a curious paradox: simultaneous admiration and distaste for work. Surely no other civilization -- if that's the right word for this American experiment, hurly-burly and adventure -- has labored so hard to make labor obsolete, or at least optional.
Americans long have sought to avoid the kind of labor that demeans: dull, rote, repetitive, unthinking and literal as the workings of a computer, the kind of brutish labor that will follow binary orders right out the window. But we never seem to tire of the kind of labor that elevates and expands the human consciousness, that approaches a craft or even art.
Whether it was the Shakers in their neat little colonies full of music and workmanship ('Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to be free....) or Jefferson at Monticello, Americans long have been fascinated with laborsaving devices. Inventing and perfecting them remains our favorite form of labor.
To equate labor with inevitable drudgery is a European confusion, and a positively un-American habit of thought. The labor that is celebrated this holiday is the opposite of drudgery; it is intended to set us free, to earn our self-respect, and free us from mere work.
Naturally a day of rest has been set aside to honor labor. If we really loved work, we'd be working -- not picnicking and taking that last dip in the pool. "Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do," Mark Twain explained in Tom Sawyer. "Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do." Whitewashing a fence can be either, depending on the psychology involved, as Tom well knew. He and the Finn boy were American to Mark Twain's core.
The hard and necessary kind of labor that requires muscle and bone may command our respect, but it is the inventive, imaginative kind that attracts our admiration.
The assembly line and the efficiency expert are American inventions, too, but they represent the dark side of our relationship with labor, the reduction of man to machine.
For Americans, labor tends to be an activity rather than an identity, what we have to do rather than what we are. We have balked at efforts to reduce us to just economic categories: capital or labor. Instead, we look on both as just different aspects of ourselves at different times. We may go broke from time to time, or hit it rich, but we refuse to be considered part of any permanent class -- upper, lower or in-between.
Unlike Europeans, we tend to view labor as a means to an end, maybe a stage that one passes through on the way to becoming just another anonymous millionaire, certainly not "our station in life." This is entirely too fluid a society for anybody to be assigned a permanent place in it. Everybody's got something else going: The little investment on the side, the private start-up after business hours, the extra shift at the plant, the new invention or rock band that we're putting together out in the garage....
Every man an entrepreneur! The phrase "working class" rings foreign in our ears despite all the efforts of those who would like to pigeonhole us. We never did pick up European phrases like The Masses, the proletariat, the underclass. ... We're much too varied, too individualistic, even quirky to let ourselves be labeled. Much as our intelligentsia (another un-American concept) would like to put us all in little boxes. We keep getting out, wanting to make our own decisions, even our own mistakes.
Indeed, one of the most powerful arguments that can be made in this country against even the most entrenched institutions -- whether the welfare system or farm subsidies -- is that they'll result in the creation of a permanent, dependent class.
In American society, community is a good word, but dependence a bad one. We're all for Social Security, having contributed to it, but resist having to go on relief. We are happy to help others stand on their own, but resent freeloaders. We associate labor with freedom, not servitude. Which is another reason slavery, the curse and bane of our history, could not last.
The idea and reality called class exists in this country as it does in any other, but we don't like to acknowledge it, which may explain our remarkable social mobility. Myths shape reality much more than the other way 'round. Our myth is called the American dream, with its hope/illusion of equal opportunity for all. If we believe in that dream, it needn't remain just a dream. If we don't, it'll never become a reality. Maybe that's why, though ours is not a classless society, it also is not a class-bound one. Happy Labor Day.
Paul Greenberg Archives
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
include "/usr/web/jewishworldreview.com/t-ssi/jwr_squaread_300x250.php";
if (strpos(, "printer_friendly") === 0)
{}
else {
=<<
© 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Tony Blankley
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Alan Douglas
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
Marybeth Hicks
David Horowitz
Jeff Jacoby
Renee James
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Ben Wattenberg
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

Mr. Know-It-All
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
Tech Maven
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|