Over the weekend MSNBC's Chris Hayes aired a video of Mitt Romney from January of this year wherein he implied that single mothers on welfare should have to work in exchange for that welfare, because they need to learn the "dignity of work." The obvious conclusion being that stay-at-home moms don't know what work is. You know, moms like Ann Romney.
Today ThinkProgress has highlighted a passage from Romney's book, No Apology, The Case for American Greatness, wherein he says the children of stay-at-home parents become indolent and unproductive, furthering the idea that single mothers on welfare should be required to work.
In other words, lazy and shiftless.
In some quarters, however, the American work ethic is waning. Some people devote themselves to find ways not to work. Some seem to take a perverse kind of pride in being slipshod or lackadaisical. In many cases, where our work culture has deteriorated, shortsighted government policies share a good part of the blame.
Welfare without work erodes the spirit and the sense of self-worth of the recipient. And it conditions the children of nonworking parents to an indolent and unproductive life. Hardworking parents raise hardworking kids; we should recognize that the opposite is also true. The influence of the work habits of our parents and other adults around us as we grow up has lasting impact.
Does this mean Romney's children became indolent and unproductive because their mother stayed at home and their father sat in a conference room and fired people for a living?
I don't know, but they do fit the equation Mitt Romney has laid out.
Given what we now know of the Romneys, I believe a better title for Romney's book would be -- No Apology, The Case for Being a Privileged White Man.