A great thing I learned from my father was "all that matters is how hard a person can work". I took this to heart and reveled in doing my chores and later picking fruit with the Mexicans as a teenager. If an issue came up re: my long hair or politics, my father would say "leave him alone, he works hard". It turns out my ancestors were all this way going back 400 years to New England, always respecting immigrants, Native & African Americans, and anyone who could "work hard". Subsequently, my ancestors fought (and sometimes died) for these people. I'm dumbfounded when I hear revisionist (and privileged) white people bash these groups.

Its taken me many years to fully understand all this, but unless one is willing to do the work of a peasant (which honestly has upsides in terms of health & perspectives), one doesn't "get it". I suppose in the old days when many worked on farms and were forced to go to war, these values were often implicit. The far right bashes "elites", but then condemns the Mexicans (& others) who do all the work (how elitist is that?) Often the far left also carries on as though they have no idea about hard work. My father has been gone for over 40 years, but I'm grateful that I subsequently married a woman who could "work hard" and raised my boys to "work hard". I've forged many ties with immigrants like Mexicans, Vietnamese, Armenians, Filipinos, Sikhs who seem to be the ones that know what I'm talking about...the ones with the gratitude, sensibility, and simplicity that comes from knowing hard work.

Rome famously rose from farmers that "reluctantly put down the plow and picked up the sword", and declined when those values faded. Patriotism, religion, family? I suppose that one who works hard avails of those things as much as is practical, all sensibilities eminating from "hard work".