Alberto Gonzales: “My Dad Was Worthless”

September 4th, 2007 · No Comments · ·

I was remiss in not noting my joy at Attorney General Gonzales finally being run off the Bush plantation.

Yay!

I did notice that in his parting remarks Gonzales basically defecated on his dad’s life’s work. But because it appeared to be just a side note, I really didn’t consider the broader implications of what he said. I wish I had. Lawrence Auster pointed to, and expanded upon, one comment from George Will in a recent Op Ed that really shines a light on the minds of both Gonzales and his master, President Bush.

Will: Now, Defining Decency Down - Newsweek George F. Will - MSNBC.com

Alberto Gonzales could not even leave high office without advertising his unfitness for it. As he habitually has done, he reminded the nation that he has “lived the American Dream,” which he evidently thinks is epitomized by his success in attaching himself to a politician not known for demanding quality in assistants. Gonzales then demonstrated how uncomprehending he is of essential American values. He said: “Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father’s best days.”Well. His father married and had eight children—nine wonderful days, days even better, one would have thought, than any of the days his son spent floundering at the Justice Department. Furthermore, Gonzales’s father had the fulfillment of a lifetime spent providing for his family. But what is any of that, Gonzales implies, compared with the satisfaction of occupying, however unsatisfactorily, a high office? This implicit disparagement of his father’s life of responsibility and self-sufficiency turns conservatism inside out. It is going to take conservatism a while to recuperate from becoming associated with such people.

There are a lot of scars that Bush has inflicted upon political conservatism. Most of them arise from the fact that conservatives have allowed Bush to carry around their mantle unchallenged, when it’s been apparent from the get-go that he isn’t on our side. He completely lacks understanding of the conservative mode, which is a pre-political mindset, and he really doesn’t comprehend traditional, political conservatism either. Shame on us for letting him get away with speaking and acting so ignorantly and carelessly with our heritage when the signs were so clear for so long!

Not only does Bush misapprehend American values, he consistently denigrates them. For instance, one of his main selling points for hispanifying America’s traditions into nonexistence is that Latinos possess “family values”; therefore, our sharing the franchise with them, no matter how many there are of them, is a de facto good. Nonsense. There’s no culture on the face of this earth that does not have its own particular “family values.” Supplant some others’ for ours and we simply won’t be “us” anymore. On behalf of my descendants, I’ll pass on Bush’s offer to “enrich” their lives with his misbegotten ideals.

What Bush inherently insists is that third world Latino values and Western-Civilization-rooted American values are not only equivalent, but somehow identical and interchangeable. Were that really the case, we wouldn’t be having all this immigration turmoil; the nations that send us the majority of our illegal aliens and legal low-skilled workers would all be doing so well that few if any of their citizens would be encroaching upon us looking for better lives, and better stuff. We must decouple from the Bush legacy before it sucks us into the humongous vortex it will surely create as it sinks to new depths of historical and historian disdain.

But I digress. I’m here today to tend to the evisceration of Gonzales. Let’s take a look at what Auster wrote:

The American Dream, as defined by Bush’s inner circle

They’ve been taught to believe, and the culture keeps confirming them in the belief, that to be a non-Caucasian and have a professional career culminating in a high level government position means that one has a “remarkable story,” which somehow makes one a significant and exceptionally admirable figure. Note furthermore that it is not any actual accomplishment that makes such people or their “story” remarkable, it is simply the fact that (1) they are nonwhite, and (2) they were promoted to certain jobs. The underlying assumption is that it is so difficult for a non-white or non-male to get hired for professional and government positions in America that one who has done so has achieved some great thing, as though he were a Columbus, a Pasteur, an Edmund Hillary! The truth is that in today’s America every mediocre non-white has every door eagerly opened to him. Yet such is the corrupting effect of racial preferences, that these people actually believe that in being handed jobs and careers they did not deserve but got on the basis of their race, they have heroically overcome impossible odds.

There isn’t one word in this I would contest or change. Gonzales not only proved time and again to be an incapable buffoon, he did so thanks to Bush’s elevating him far beyond the extent of his skills. What we have is a Peter Principle-promoting presidency based on false conservatism attached to a virulent form of “anti-racism” masquerading as “compassion.”

Gonzales proved to be just another poster boy for it.