American greatness was built work on the hard work and ingenuity of men and women who constructed our roads, bridges and cars and those who staffed our hospitals and offices. America was the doorway for people who had the passion and desire to invent new products that made life easier and more fun: the electric light bulb, the telephone, the personal computer, and the camera.

Our lives are safer today because America’s liberty unleashed the geniuses of people who invented antibiotics, vaccines, and MRI machines.

These and hundreds of other products we find in our homes from condensed soup to frozen peas were invented and made in America by people who were not afraid to work.

From our nation’s inception, Americans valued hard work and disdained idleness. Benjamin Franklin extolled the virtues of hard work in his most famous quote: “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” Colin Powell said: “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”

Today we have an administration in Washington and a political party that disdains and devalues work. They think it is in America’s best interest to pay people to stay home and not work.  They are stunting initiative and demeaning the value of labor and self-reliance. They want taxpayers to make up for what people lack in enterprise. That’s bad for America’s future.

America is full of stories about people who started at the bottom and went to the top. They accomplished those things because they wanted more from life than they were getting. Along the way, they made major contributions to America.

Steve Jobs started tinkering with computers in his garage and grew his enterprise into a multi-billion corporation known as Apple, which employs 147,000 people today.

Starbucks founder Howard Schultz grew up in the Bronx, the son of a truck driver and a homemaker. He paid for college with government loans and money earned from part-time jobs. He started working for a coffee company and later turned that company into the ubiquitous Starbucks brand.

Not everyone is going to move from the garage to a mansion, but most people will never get out of the garage if America continues to discount work.