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Watching Senate-hopeful Ted Cruz speak Tuesday night at the Republican National Convention, it’s easy to see why he defeated his more formidable opponent in the primary. Sans podium, he paced the stage like a TV evangelist delivering an impassioned sermon. When he smiles, it’s authentic.
His sermon — or rather, his speech — was on Democratic spending and how it’s costing Americans their future. (You know, that old bag.) He pointed to the debt clock hanging in Tampa Bay Times Forum that stood at just under $16 trillion and asked, “How do we turn things around? How do we get America back to work? President Obama thinks the answer is more and more government. Government is not the answer. You are not doing anyone a favor by creating dependency, destroying individual responsibility.”
To drive home the point that less government makes people more driven and responsible, he told the story of when his father first emigrated from Cuba in 1957:
“When he came to America, no tenía nada, pero tenía corazón. He had nothing, but he had heart. A heart for freedom. Fifty-five years ago, when my dad was a penniless teenage immigrant, thank God some well-meaning bureaucrat didn’t put his arm around him and say let me take care of you. That would have been the most destructive thing anyone could have done.”
Most Latinos understand Cruz’s argument. If there’s any group of workers and dreamers in America who understands the virtues of individual responsibility and work ethic, it’s Latinos. Show me one person who puts in a harder day’s work than a Mexican produce picker or a Honduran day laborer? My own grandmother has told me stories of coming to the United States without knowing a soul and having to load an industrial-size printing machine by hand for hours on end. Because of her hard work, her hands were more rough and calloused at 35 than mine will ever be. Those hands have allowed my hands to write.
The idea that Cruz and the Republican Party are shoving onto Latinos is the same idea most Latinos know to be a myth: the idea that everyone is born equal and with equal opportunities. Sure, we’re born with equal rights, but not equal privileges. Mitt Romney and I, for instance, were not born equal: he was born the son of a governor, while I was born the son of a single-mother from Honduras who worked in a factory.
Historians often point out that the man who famously wrote that “all men are created equal” was born a Virginia aristocrat and held over 200 slaves — an inconvenient truth for modern-day conservatives who rely heavily on the Founding Fathers. What Jefferson should’ve said — but couldn’t, for obvious reasons — is that although all men are not created equal, all men are born with equal rights.
If all men were created equal, then I would have no argument against free markets, since everyone would have the same opportunities at achieving the same goals. If all groups were created equal, then it would be unjust to give one group more help than another.
But, as Harper Lee writes in To Kill a Mockingbird, “We know all men are not created equal.” Progressives know this, too, and so they try to set up programs that minimize the inequalities: affirmative action, Dodd-Frank, Obamacare and student loan reform are some of the more obvious methods.
Socioeconomically speaking, the wealth disparity makes some groups born wolves and the others sheep. Democrats want to build a higher fence, but the GOP feels there should be no fence at all. While some sheep become wolves through hard work and luck, most do not. Pointing to the number of people who escape poverty is like pointing to the number of voter fraud incidents. Saying “you can make it through hard work” because a few do is like saying “birds don’t fly” because a few don’t.
So don’t be fooled. Conservatives want to shrink government (the fence) in the name of freedom and fairness. But the system isn’t fair, and you’re only free to struggle for the rest of your life.
Most Latinos know this.
About Hector Luis Alamo, Jr.
excellent article Hector! si, todos nacemos iguales, pero en diferentes grupos socio-economicos. Los latinos tenemos que enfocarnos en educar a nuestras futuras generaciones, para que si aun naciendo en este pais de oportunidades, no pierdan la identidad y lleven el ser latinos con orgullo! educacion, educacion y mas educacion, solo asi venceremos las cadenas que nos atan! La unica diferencia que no se puede superar es la ignorancia. Y como dicen aqui: you can’t fix stupid, asi que a estudiar!!!!
democrats will always hate no matter what.just who they are.he’s obvioulsy a very smart man,came from nothing to be where he’s at today.he wasnt born rich thats for sure.he’s no sellout either
i guess the writer of the article was saying that everything mr.Cruz said was garbage.even a immigrant who came from nothing still gets hated on by the democrats.hilarious
That’s not what I said. I’m the son of an immigrant, and I’m married to one.
There are immigrants who came here from nothing who disagree with Mr. Cruz. We see the world differently. I think I’m right; he thinks he’s right.
I know lots of legal Latino immigrants that live the same path that Ted Cruz has lived. Helping others is a great thing and we should do it, but the attitude of Democrats is one of perpetual dysfunction and the only path is the one of big government and central planning. Sometimes Latinos complain too much of lack and persecution and they spend all their times doing this and miss out on opportunity.
There are a plethora of millionaire Democrats and liberal stars that also make so much money that even this Cuban American conservative would never attain, but I am not obsessing about this and just live my life to the best of my ability without jumping into class, race, and sex warfare rhetoric.
Interesting.
No one is born equal and no one has equal opportunities.
On the other side,
There is a lot to be about a number of individuals using taxpayer-funded programs as a crutch.
Since children Latinos are instilled by the media, teachers unions, Democrat party, the leftist church groups, labor unions, liberal foundations that they somehow are handicapped, ghettoized, discriminated and the only way out of the misery is through us, the Democrat party! No wonder Latinos can’t succeed even after decades of being here when others have been here for not that long. A strong persecution complex is being built into the Latino psyche. It’s all man made – and Democrat infused.
@mario i agree 100% its unfortunate the dems are blinded by their hatred of reps. if the repulbicans were all all about the wealthy all these hollywood stars would support them but its not about wealth.thats what the dems want ppl to think and also they play the Race card all the time.that is their whole platform
Our rights come from Nature not the state. Some government help is ok but when you grasp that concept one sees life in an entirely different light.
I think sadly a lot of Latinos and “people of color” (if you like those fuzzy and ambiguous politically correct buzz words) bring a lot of misery and hardship amomgst themselves by the way the dress, music they listen to, attitudes they take in, the way they speak. Slight adjustments or elimination of these pathologies will work wonders in improving the lots of many Latinos.
I also think most people hold themselves down, but then again, I think they’re given certain cues to do so. And in the end, we can do no more than what we know to do.
The system is unfair. I think we can all agree on that. There is no harm in pointing that out.
And Dems don’t believe in a welfare state. I agree with the Democratic platform, and I certainly don’t agree with the welfare state. But progressive do believe in supporting the general warfare by ensure there’s a safety net to provide for the people who fall too far.
We also believe the wealthy should be allowed to earn as much as they can, so long as the money doesn’t kick someone else out of their home or take food out of their mouth.
Yet still — and here lies the socialist in me — doesn’t a wealth and income disparity so wide necessarily breed inequality? Doesn’t it create two Americas, one good and one terrible? What’s worse: to tax a billionaire at 50 percent or to allow a child to sleep on the street?
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” The same goes for wealthy men.
In this case the tree is debt. And our children will never see the sun.
to me the system became fair only after the civil rights movement took place and it personally affected me after I received my college degree and companies were mandated by the government that a % of their employees had to be minorities…and guess what political party accomplish this
Good article. I came here after Googling “All men are not created equal”. The same thought was going through my head. Just so happens I’m latino.
While the system may seem unfair, I think it’s about the fairest system anyone could come up with. Although pretty impossible, I think if you could somehow split up all the wealth amongst everyone equally, you would still end up with rich people and poor people. Just the nature of us, realistically, being unequal would necessarily cause this to eventually happen.
I think the best system is one that encourages and incentivizes the creation of wealth. I think the progressive system is much less inefficient, at that, than conservative system.
Regardless, our system pretty much assures that anytime the ship leans too far left or right, we can vote someone in to right the ship.
I think our biggest problem now is that both sides are borrowing WAY too much money to support gov’t programs. Too much of our money is going overseas in interest payments, and both sides are guilty. $90 billion a year in increased tax revenue is a fiscal cliff?!? Over a trillion in deficit spending is the real cliff!
Sorry if I rambled.