Who builds businesses in America?....
"There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans, and many of them attribute their wealth and success to their own intelligence and hard work....There are a lot of smart people out there. Let me tell you something—there are a whole bunch of hard-working 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."
Start with what is unexceptionable: no one succeeds entirely alone. This sentiment, spoken in utterly pedestrian prose by The One, was famously penned poetically in 1624 by England's John Donne (1572-1631):
No Man Is An Island
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
Pick your formulation; I prefer the latter.
But now we get to where Obama went off the rails: (1) Yes, there are indeed a lot of smart people out there, but everyone is not equally smart. (2) Yes, there are a lot of hard-working people out there, but not everyone is equally industrious. (3) It gets worse: "If you've got a business—you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." (Italics mine.)
Yes, Henry Ford got help, and, apparently, attributed his success in part to government legalisation funding road building. NO quarrel with this. BUT: Henry Ford DID CONCEIVE the Model T, which his employees physically built. He took the financial risk--bankruptcy. His entrepreneurial energy and intelligence MADE the Model T happen. Those who helped him get an assist, but only helped create possibilities. It took Henry Ford, a rare bird indeed, to see them and seize them. Government building roads creates myriad possibilities, but it is America's Henry Fords who ultimately MAKE things happen.
Perhaps we can best explain it to President Obama, he of the great jump shot, by putting it this way. The guys who passed the ball to Jordan did not make him score. They merely created the possibility that he might score. And Jordan did. So Jordan, justly, is in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Most of the teammates who fed passes to him are not. They do not belong there. Jordan does.
Oh, and by the way, if The One wishes to push the point, that roads made the Model T happen, is "O" also prepared to claim governmental credit for Al Capone's bootlegging enterprise?
Bottom Line. A helping hand along the way--which all of us, save the most unfortunate receive--does not MAKE anything. It creates mere possibility. But the individual with initiative steps forward and MAKES new things happen. Entrepreneurs get this, because they take substantial financial risks. Community organizers, who effect wealth transfers by blackmailing governments & corporations to fork over coin of the realm to their clients (usually aided by fawning news media coverage), do not get this.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, Ecoomy, Conservative Politics
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