RoR: Forum

Bill already posted a News Discussion thread about this, but I foresee that it is important enough to deserve a stand-alone quote. I think it is perhaps one of the most famous lines for which Obama will be remembered (as the president who almost destroyed our country).

Ed

Post 1

Monday, July 23, 2012 - 6:15pm

Elizabeth Warren, last year in a speech as a candidate for 'senator' (of Massachusetts), made a similar statement -- which undoubtedly served as a "poll-test" for Obama's use of similar reasoning:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Post 2

Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - 6:31pm

Four words for the President's quote.

"Too much, too soon."

Post 3

Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - 8:39pm

Obama says,

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.

That's just a way to demean any individual effort and a verbal set up for for the false assumption that government creates wealth when in fact it consumes it.
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Then he goes on to say,

...this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.

The system (government) ALLOWED you to thrive! My how nice of them to let someone thrive.
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Then he says,

Somebody invested in roads and bridges.

Duh. Isn't that mostly state and local taxes, a small amount of stimulus borrowed mostly from China and other countries, and some federal taxes, most of which was out of the national gas tax? So, who "invested" in roads and bridges? We did, and our children and our grandchildren will as the debts come due. And we are supposed to get all excited and thank ourselves for "creating" businesses by involuntarily sending money to Washington! "Please, sir, may I have more taxes?"

And we are supposed to believe that nonsense?!?!?!
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How can someone not see Obama as either a total idiot or an outright socialist for believing that government creates wealth - not the private sector?
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As a percent of government spending from Washington, roads and bridges and federal contributions to teachers is TINY - but look how few have bothered to point that out. It gives lie to the entire thrust of his argument. It makes a mockery of his argument. What is left when you take out the phoney and inaccurate business of government roads and bridges and government teachers creating the businesses that created the wealth, all that is really left is THE BIG LIE BEING SMUGGLED IN: GOVERNMENT CREATES WEALTH.
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Dear President Obama,

Please imagine this large grinder, like a meat grinder. It is the private, American market place with investors, producers and consumers and they are all pushing investments, raw goods, services and purchases, into the maw of the beast. All that stuff goes and the handle cranks (transactions occurring) and the output is actually worth more than what went in (under normal conditions) - that's the way it works. Now if you, as government, take and siphon off a lot of wealth before it can be pushed in, and you don't let some of what was grabbed get back to the investors, producers or consumers, then less will come out - there will be less wealth. Period. That's all government can do.... siphon off, prohibit, reduce the cranks of wheel, make the grinder less efficient, etc. It can't increase the wealth one bit. I know, you want to say that government is turning the crank, or that it built the crank, or that it created the table the grinder is bolted to, but that just isn't so and you need to understand that people were building grinders and turning cranks before government existed. Please go back and read your oath of office and stop transforming us into a strange socialist image from your communist, anti-colonial father - that isn't your job, and you are destroying this nation.

(Edited by Steve Wolfer on 7/25, 8:57pm)

Post 4

Thursday, July 26, 2012 - 4:02am

You Didn't Build That! http://patriotpost.us/humor/14209/

Post 5

Saturday, July 28, 2012 - 7:06am

Here is a copy of the latest post on Henry Mark Holzer's blog-site (For those of you born yesterday, he was Ayn Rand's former attorney, is an author and has many decades under his belt as a professor of Constitutional law :-)

Every time that I think someone has given the last word on Obama's awful statement, someone else gets still closer to the heart of it. Mr. Holzer may well have had the last word. Well said, Mr. Holzer!
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The Real Meaning of "You didn't build that."

Posted: 27 Jul 2012 06:26 PM PDT

Obama spoke those four words last week in the context of a wider statement that can only be spun, but not misunderstood.

Those now infamous words amounted to his explicit confession of the ethical principle at the core of Obama’s belief system: collectivism.

As good a definition of collectivism one can find is Ayn Rand’s: “Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group -- whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called ‘the common good’.”

OK, if “you didn’t build that,” someone else did -- and Obama told us who it was: other people, whether configured as “the government,” or “society.” Anyone other than you. The collective.

This means that if you didn’t build "that" and the collective did . . . well, you have no inalienable right to “that.”

According to the President of the United States -- the freest, most capitalist, private property protective nation ever to exist -- individuals create nothing by themselves, it’s the collective that’s responsible, and so that’s where ownership of the "that" properly should be vested.

What's the "that"?

Private property. Your private property.

Obama’s naked collectivist attack on individual enterprise -- "You didn't build 'that'" -- was, at bottom, an attack on the nature, source, and ownership of private property.

Someone, please explain that to Mitt Romney, as well as every Republican candidate running for election today.
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Post 6

Saturday, July 28, 2012 - 9:52am

The argument you'll hear from Obama supporters is that his remark was misinterpreted and taken out of context. When he said "If you've got a business, you didn't build that," he was referring not to your business but to the infrastructure that allowed your business to thrive.

So filling in the context: "Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that [i.e., the roads and bridges]. Somebody else made that happen." [Emphasis added]

But this objection also ignores the rest of his remarks, in which he does quite unequivocally repudiate individual success:. To wit: ". . . look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help."

So, while he is not saying that you didn't build your business at all, he is saying that you didn't build it on your own -- that the product of your effort was a collective achievement, not an individual one.

Of course, other people are involved in the operation of a business besides the originator or entrepreneur, but he is the person responsible for creating it, insofar as he is the one who borrows the money to start it and who organizes and pays for the factors or production, such as the land, labor and capital upon which it depends. He is also the person who must pay the bills in order to sustain it -- such as rent for plant and equipment, wages for his workers, and any debts that he incurs in order to meet his expenses. Most importantly, he is the person responsible for the decisions that determine whether the business succeeds or fails. Contrary to the tenor of Obama's remarks, the entrepreneur is indeed the principal agent responsible for building his business (and for sustaining it).

(Edited by William Dwyer on 7/28, 10:00am)

Post 7

Saturday, July 28, 2012 - 11:09am

Limbaugh hit a home run on this one -- tying it into the anti-individualist reasoning of George Lakoff from Berkeley.

Post 8

Saturday, July 28, 2012 - 1:00pm

Bill, as you pointed out, he's still in trouble if it is understood as he is now aattempted to spin it.

But I don't buy the spin and think it just lie.

Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. Would have to have become: Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build THOSE. Somebody else made THEM happen. (Because roads and bridges are plural) One mismatch might happen but two - I don't thinks so.

And that still doesn't' explaining how both singular pronouns helicopter themselves up right out of their current sentence and go looking for their referent in the sentence before that one. right over their proper recipient - the last noun: "business" which matches in tense and locatioin... No, it is claimed that they BOTH went to a sentence furher back to hook to pluran nouns.

Further it looses cadence with the other examples where he says that there are lots of smart people out there - clearly he isnt saying a businessman made his mentor smarter or that he build the schools he attendeded.
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Candidates statements those they approve of need independent vetting and assigned a LIE factor and it it needs to be additive so that a characture of the candidate's nose would grow with each assigned LIE award. Big spin attempt to remove a bad statement should qualify as a LIE on a LIE - a bigger nose on the charactrure. Biden and Obam's noses would enter the room significantly before their candidates arrived.

Post 9

Saturday, July 28, 2012 - 5:45pm

Steve,

Obama was speaking extemporaneously. If he were writing it, it would be less excusable. True, he used a singular pronoun instead of a plural one, but he may have been thinking of the roads and bridges as one type of thing, i.e., as infrastructure. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, because it's difficult for me to believe that he would say that somebody else, but not you, built what you created. That doesn't make any sense, even from Obama's collectivist perspective.

Post 10

Saturday, July 28, 2012 - 7:07pm

Since we are such benevolent people, let's be as generous as possible when we interpret President Obama's words, at least for the moment. Let's accept President Obama's later clarifications. In that case, as Mr. Dwyer has already pointed out, Pres. Obama was only stating that "You (the businessperson) didn't build the roads and bridges that made your business successful." This statement is, of course, true. In our nation "the collective" built those roads and bridges.

None of that changes the fact that some individuals found a way to use those roads and bridges to produce a product, while the vast majority of the "collective" did nothing of the kind. I guess that factory owner must have been pretty smart and hard-working after all.

Someone should also point out to President Obama that the people who purchased goods from that factory got them at a lower price because they were transported over those roads and bridges. In effect, the "collective" reaps as much reward from those roads and bridges as does the factory owner. The reward for "the collective" is simply spread out over every person who purchased something from the factory at a lower price as well as every person who profited from the manufacture, sale, use, or possession of that factory's products. Haranguing all of them for profiting from the collective's roads and bridges would be bad politics though. They represent too many voters. The factory owner is a minority of one. Targetting him is much less risky.

Post 11

Saturday, July 28, 2012 - 8:39pm

Hi Bill,

I am a benevolent person, and I thank you for noticing it. But that doesn't stop me from holding a poisonous snake carefully behind its head.

The president has, over time, done nothing to earn the benefit of the doubt - so no, I'm not giving it to him here.

Would he mean to imply that the businessmen SHOULD have built the roads and bridges? But they did, involuntarily, with the majority of the taxes coming from them in individual, coroporate, and gasoline taxes from their revenues and shipping expenses. (Certainly neither Obama, the congress nor the bureaucrats have ever paid a dollar, not for any road or bridge, unless that dollar was first borrowed, printed, or confiscated from private citizens.)

I believe that Obama has a blind hatred for certain classes of people and his 'errors' come out those very few times he isn't guarded enough - like when he accused doctors of cutting off people's feet unneccesarrily to make a buck. As with most politicians, an 'error' is the accidental utterance of the truth.

Is he trumpeting federal government's wonderfulness, when its budget (if it had one) has so little to do with the infrastructure in question - when it is such a tiny, tiny percent? Maybe. Because he seems to think that more such infrastructure spending (Borrow $40 from China, and tax $60 from the rich) and spend about $30 of that on administrative rat-holes, $30 on political payback, and $40 on a road that could have been done in private for $20). Is this his big argument: "Elect me, I'll do more infrastructure from Washington even though it is really a matter of local policy and not going to help the major problems we face today"? Or is the argument really, "No one deserves anything as individuals - you don't build things. We the collective are builders."? And is it an accident that it is yet another attack on the wealthy (we poor rarely own a factory). And it is not lost on me that Romney is in that 'factoried' class. Wahoo! Attack capitalism, individualism, Romney, the rich and do it all under an implied justification for more collective 'stimulus' spending. (I'll give the man the credit for gleefully seeing all of that!)
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Actually the fact that a great deal of infrasctructure was done as government projects rather than private projects means those goods shipped to us cost each of us a tiny bit more... but that, just like Obama's statement, is not the fault of the owners and investors and directors of the factories.

Post 12

Saturday, July 28, 2012 - 9:32pm

To interpret Obama's meaning behind that statement, you only need to examine the context; he is trying to justify forced association without ever using the phrase forced association.

It's true that there are many successful people in the USA, and many of them have indeed driven on the interstates that JFK's generation built, and live in a Nazi free world that our parents gave us by way of great sacrifices. And as peers living in that freedom, it is one thing for those successful peers to give to whatever charities -they- choose.

But none of those facts of peer based freedom translate into an argument to grant to Obama and his the right to direct state force to endlessly redistribute other's success to causes of their choosing on the basis of arbitrary whim -- to force association of all with Obama's bottomless visions of social justice, forever demanding only ever 'more.'

No, Mr. Obama, the fact the JFK's generation built the interstates, and our parents generation gave us the free world, is not a reason to hand our freedom over to the curiously selective task of implementing your precious worldview for you. Does not follow, not even close.

The culmination of all that effort was not to anoint our participation trophy president the Emperor of Disposing of The Success of Others.

We've tried the endlessly 'more' plan, and it is leading then nation in a massive race to the bottom. 50 plus years of this endless slide to oblivion is enough. America's Great Society experiment is a giant failure. It is more than beyond time to go back to the wisdom of JFK and his $100B/of federal spending, fully adjusted to $1500B/yr.

We do not deserve more federal goodies and government than the generation that defeated Germany and Japan and buult the interstates and went to the Moon. In a nation barely twice as large, we are not nearly 300 times more sickly in current dollars, nor 19 times more sickly in constant dollars, then JFK's America, nor are we more deserving of every medical technology that exists merely because we showed up and are breathing. JFKs America was not stepping over dead bodies cast in the street without access to all that medical technology and neither would Obama's America spending $1500B/yr in public spending.

Post 13

Monday, July 30, 2012 - 8:55pm

I just want to offer up a name for the argument that Obama is using in order to try and grab more power here:

"Appeal to the Social Contract"

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 7/30, 8:55pm)

Post 14

Monday, July 30, 2012 - 9:14pm

Here is a telling thought experiment. Imagine that there are these 10 guys who really had it in for you:

Gary
Owen
Victor
Edward
Ron
Nathan
Mike
Eugene
Nick
Tom

Let's say they collected money from everyone so they had a lot of money to build things (if they wanted to build things). Let's say that you had an idea to build a bridge and prepared to do so. These 10 guys got wind of your plans and, because there is more of them than there is of you (and because they are funded by money taken from everyone), they beat you to it. In the exact place where you had planned to build a bridge, you show up to build it only to discover that the 10 men had just finished building a bridge right there. Now, instead of offering you use of the bridge (which you partly paid for), they make you pay a toll to cross it. Then, you imagine a place where it would be good to build a road and ...

Do you see where this is going? If every time you try to exercise personal innovation, these guys discover your plans and beat you to it, then you never build personal wealth -- but are instead bled dry by the 10 men who assure you that you could not have functioned well without them.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 7/30, 9:15pm)

Post 15

Tuesday, July 31, 2012 - 6:54pm

Ed:

That crew of ten actually believes, as in deeply embedded attitude, that it is entitled to 'run the economy,' and more, to be funded at whatever level is necessary to make it comfortable while attempting to.

The word 'frugal' does not come to mind when pondering the real estate market in Northern VA.

The phrase 'public servant...with a servant's heart' does not come to mind, as well.

No, what comes to mind are words and phrases like 'profligate' and 'extravagant' and 'cronyism' and 'entitled' and 'totally out of control' and 'imperial' and 'OPM' and 'Hunger Games.'

Do you remember those quaint movies from the 30s with James Cagney, and the G-Men chasing Organized Crime? RFK and the Kiefauver commission in the late 50s?

And then, in short order, both JFK and RFK are assassinated?

And then we barely heard of organized crime after that. In short order, Scarfo and a handful of others etc, are ... what? Retired?

So one day, JFK is spending $100 billion of OPM in a vibrant and hopeful America, and 50years later, whatever we call the mess in DC is spending $3800B /yr of OPM while governments at every level are in constant fiscal crisis...

Did the mob take over this nation, and has it been bleeding it dry?

It can't just all be dufuses like Obama. It takes a village of mobbed up idiots to screw the pooch this badly.

I always assumed the Mafia would understand how to modulate their take. Not this government. That is what keeps me from thinking the mob took over the nation.

The GOP had its shots in the last 50 years, but even Nixon was a (half) Keynesian.

Not just dumb and dumber. Systematically, what on average we're average humans do when given half a chance; rape, pillage, and burn, all the while wrapped in the flag, convinced that all that unsightly commandeering of the life and effort of others was a good and noble thing on the way to the double-dip defined benefit pensions...

Enough to make decent folks puke. And we should.

regards,
Fred

Post 16

Tuesday, July 31, 2012 - 7:53pm

Fred,

It takes a village of mobbed up idiots to screw the pooch this badly.

You know, I don't want to ask you to stop -- because then I might not be thrown such precious gems like this quote -- but sometimes you actually make me jealous/envious (because you write so well). It's amazing what it is that you can fit into just 14 words. The hallmark of being a good writer is not having to write a lot (in order to say what needed to be said). I think it was Descartes who once apologized in a letter to someone [a paraphrase]:

"I'm sorry this letter is so long. With more time and effort, I could have made it shorter."

Anyway, I hope you don't stop. On a more healthy view, it's inspiring.

Ed

Post 17

Tuesday, July 31, 2012 - 8:00pm

...even Nixon was a (half) Keynesian.

Just half? He killed the last link between the dollar and gold (to my mind there is no bigger key to the difference between the 100B and 3800B you mention), he tried price wage and price controls - twice - started the 'war' on cancer and the 'war' on drugs, and created the EPA and OSHA, he required Environmental Impact Statements on federal projects, and saw an overall increase in federal spending. It is so bizarre that just because someone is republican, like Nixon, like Bush, that it is assumed that they are fiscal conservatives or small government fans.

Post 18

Tuesday, July 31, 2012 - 8:32pm

Ed,

It appears that quote about the long letter has been variously attributed to Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Samuel Johnson, T.S. Eliot, Cicero, John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, Henry David Thoreau, Woodrow Wilson, George Bernard Shaw, Voltaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Winston Churchill, Pliny the Younger, Cato, and even Bill Clinton. But the best bet is Blaise Pascal in 1657.

Post 19

Tuesday, July 31, 2012 - 8:55pm