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no doubt Obama wants that one back.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...iwW_story.html
“If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
— Barack Obama,
Roanoke, Va., July 13
And who might that somebody else be? Government, says Obama. It built the roads you drive on. It provided the teacher who inspired you. It “created the Internet.” It represents the embodiment of “we’re in this together” social solidarity that, in Obama’s view, is the essential origin of individual and national achievement.
To say that all individuals are embedded in and the product of society is banal. Obama rises above banality by means of fallacy: equating society with government, the collectivity with the state. Of course we are shaped by our milieu. But the most formative, most important influence on the individual is not government. It is civil society, those elements of the collectivity that lie outside government: family, neighborhood, church, Rotary club, PTA, the voluntary associations that Tocqueville understood to be the genius of America and source of its energy and freedom.
Moreover, the greatest threat to a robust, autonomous civil society is the ever-growing Leviathan state and those like Obama who see it as the ultimate expression of the collective.
Obama compounds the fallacy by declaring the state to be the font of entrepreneurial success. How so? It created the infrastructure — roads, bridges, schools, Internet — off which we all thrive.
Absurd. We don’t credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of Relativity because it transmitted Einstein’s manuscript to the Annalen der Physik. Everyone drives the roads, goes to school, uses the mails. So did Steve Jobs. Yet only he created the Mac and the iPad.
Obama’s infrastructure argument is easily refuted by what is essentially a controlled social experiment. Roads and schools are the constant. What’s variable is the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual. It is therefore precisely those individual characteristics, not the communal utilities, that account for the different outcomes.
The ultimate Obama fallacy, however, is the conceit that belief in the value of infrastructure — and willingness to invest in its creation and maintenance — is what divides liberals from conservatives.
More nonsense. Infrastructure is not a liberal idea, nor is it particularly new. The Via Appia was built 2,300 years ago. The Romans built aqueducts, too. And sewers. Since forever, infrastructure has been consensually understood to be a core function of government.
The argument between left and right is about what you do beyond infrastructure. It’s about transfer payments and redistributionist taxation, about geometrically expanding en lements, about tax breaks and subsidies to induce actions pleasing to central planners. It’s about free contraceptives for privileged students and welfare without work — the latest Obama en lement-by-decree that would fatally undermine the great bipartisan welfare reform of 1996. It’s about endless government handouts that, ironically, are crowding out necessary spending on, yes, infrastructure.
What divides liberals and conservatives is not roads and bridges but Julia’s world, an Obama campaign creation that may be the most self-revealing parody of liberalism ever conceived. It’s a series of cartoon illustrations in which a fictional Julia is swaddled and subsidized throughout her life by an all- giving government of bottomless pockets and “Queen for a Day” magnanimity. At every stage, the state is there to provide — preschool classes and cut-rate college loans, birth control and maternity care, business loans and retirement. The only time she’s on her own is at her grave site.
Julia’s world is totally atomized. It contains no friends, no community and, of course, no spouse. Who needs one? She’s married to the provider state.
Or to put it slightly differently, the “Life of Julia” represents the paradigmatic Obama political philosophy: citizen as orphan child. For the conservative, providing for every need is the duty that government owes to actual orphan children. Not to supposedly autonomous adults.
Beyond infrastructure, the conservative sees the proper role of government as providing not European-style universal en lements but a firm safety net, meaning Julia-like treatment for those who really cannot make it on their own — those too young or too old, too mentally or physically impaired, to provide for themselves.
Limited government so conceived has two indispensable advantages. It avoids inexorable European-style national insolvency. And it avoids breeding debilitating individual dependency. It encourages and celebrates character, independence, energy, hard work as the foundations of a free society and a thriving economy — precisely the virtues Obama discounts and devalues in his accounting of the wealth of nations.
no doubt Obama wants that one back.
Krauthammer and his extremist WaPo twin Geo Will really ought to be working at Fox Repug propaganda network.
the right-wing lie factory is totally lying about his message.
Obama still wants that one back.
I wouldn't be surprised if Obama wants it back, just so that he can say the exact same thing, but shuffle the words around. Unfortunately, putting those two phrases together, in that order, and by themselves, means something totally different than if one could actually read and not have things force fed to them.
Que' Cera
DarrinS and his ilk are the reason that speeches are given at an 8th grade level. As Scott has said several times, nuance has no place in todays American politics.
Last edited by Drachen; 07-20-2012 at 10:45 AM.
Certainly true. That being said I think the OP is making a fair attempt at interpreting Obama's remarks and gives an honest, contrarian viewpoint.
Damn good article. Even though there's a strong albeit unstated libertarian thread running through it, still makes a good point.
lol boutons
Yep... luckily for Obama though, Willard has buried it with his tax returns drama...
I understand what Obama was trying to say, but my god, he worded it poorly and Blake is right about him wanting that one back.
He's lucky there won't be an evil conspiracy involving batman to demonize him.
Not really. The only people who "care" about things like Obama's statement and Willard's taxes are red & blue team members. Red team isn't bothered by Willard's taxes, so as far as their concerned there's nothing burying Obama's "you didn't build that" comment. Same applies for Blue team who doesn't see anything wrong with Obama's comment and is certain that Willard's taxes are much more important.
Fair enough, This is at least a more reasonable opposing view. I don't agree that he said government this or government that (he didn't). I have a problem here:
because both the constant and the variable make up the equation and therefore without the constant, the equation is still not the same (thus the "we succeed because of our own initiate, but also because of ....)Roads and schools are the constant. What’s variable is the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual
This is dumb since the countries which have failed, did so for variant reasons. I would posit that the only one that failed due to the reasons that the author mentioned is Greece. Not Iceland, or Ireland, etc. Additionally, Germany has a very strong economy even though it has many of the social programs that are abhored on the right.It avoids inexorable European-style national insolvency
I'm a member of neither team and I care about that..... I find it hypocritical for someone who loved to propose tax hikes in Massachusetts to be so against proving whether he actually paid all his taxes....
I see what you're saying, but Willard's taxes and Bain have been blown out of proportion to such a large extreme that I have a hard time believing only blue team cares about it at this point.
Deos anyone think darrins actually understood the context of that statement? Either he is stupid or dishonest..
"There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me because they want to give something back," the president said. "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. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. 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. Somebody else made that happen," he said. "The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."
Last edited by George Gervin's Afro; 07-20-2012 at 11:12 AM.
The fatal error in K's thesis is that ed up America, stuck in the Banksters' Great (jobs) Depression, is that this IS a Repug economy, with govt %age of GDP at all time low (spending) and (corporate) taxes as %age of total at an all time low.
:Facepalm
The state doesn't make anyone great, and Obama did not insinuate that. The government can help, and in fact is needed to compete in the global economy. Right wingers can not seem to understand that for profit motives are not always the best option for progress.
"I don't care about poor people"
"I like firing people"
--Best Regards, Gecko
Using these are equally as stupid as the BO quote above.
I agree that what BO said was stupid. It's a retread of an Elizabeth Warren rant, so no surprise there.
Well that's not true.Roads and schools are the constant.
i guess the roads are constant in Austin, and that's the problem.
It's funny watching all the liberal apologists try to make excuses for Obama whilst simultaneously knowing they're in the wrong. Obama just saying what Hitler, Mao, Stalin and others said before him.
The state is now God.
"state is now God"
right-wing anti-govt bull .
the govt is nothing but a surrogate for corporate power, which pays s like Repugs, Fox, etc to say Govt Is The Problem, to corporate guilt.
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