The Lie That Should Sink Obama
July 27, 2012 by Chip Wood
UPI
The words "you didn't build that" may sink Barack Obama's campaign.
If there is one sentence that determines who will win this year’s Presidential election, I hope it will be Barack Obama’s incredible statement that “you didn’t build that.”
In just four short words, Obama confirmed his bias against America’s business builders and job creators — the men and women who slaved and sacrificed to help make us the wealthiest, most productive and most generous Nation the world has ever known.
Yes, I know, I’ll be accused of taking his words out of context. That he really wasn’t engaging in the blatant, anti-business bias I’ve accused him of. Baloney! Let’s look more closely at exactly what our Great Leader said. Here is a verbatim quote from his campaign speech in Roanoke, Va., on July 13:
[L]ook, 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.
Obama’s apologists like to claim that the President was merely referring to “roads and bridges” when he said “you didn’t build that.” What a bunch of nonsense! First of all, let me play grammarian here and point out that “roads and bridges” are plural, not singular. Anyone with a fifth-grade education, much less two college degrees, would know to say “you didn’t build those,” not “that.”
Moreover, if you try to accept the apologists’ explanation, then you have to admit that Obama not only made a grammatical mistake, he made a factual one as well. Anyone who drives a car or truck did pay for those “roads and bridges.” All of this infrastructure (and a lot more besides) was financed by the taxes on the fuel we used.
No, the message the President was trying to convey seems pretty clear to me: Every successful entrepreneur in America owes a debt of gratitude — and a lot more taxes — to government. Not only that, but the more successful you are, the more you owe.
So Henry Ford can’t take credit for giving birth to the automobile industry. Thomas Edison would never have invented the light bulb if it weren’t for “somebody else” who made it happen. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and thousands of other modern builders and inventors wouldn’t have succeeded if it weren’t for the helping hand of government.
In fact, the Harry Reids and Nancy Pelosis of this world go even further. They seem to believe that government is entitled to all of the money you make. And anytime our beneficent rulers allow you to keep some of your earnings, it is somehow doing you a favor. How else can you explain the attitude that cutting your taxes is somehow giving you a subsidy? That letting us keep anything is doing us a favor?
If “you didn’t build that,” then you really have no right to own it or control it. If “you didn’t build that,” then government is entitled to tax it, to regulate it, even to seize it, if it so desires. If “somebody else made that happen,” then government has every right to seize what you have and share it with “somebody else.”
The truth is 180 degrees the opposite of what these grade-school Marxists proclaim: Most business creators and job builders in this country have succeeded in spite of government, not because of it. And they would have been able to invest a lot more money, take a lot more risk, build more businesses and create more jobs, if they had been allowed to keep more of the money they earned.
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–Chip Wood
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