This week the President was caught with more of his Marxist undergarments showing in Roanoke. You might say he had a philosophical wardrobe malfunction while he was riffing without his nanny-like teleprompter there to protect him from himself. For a widely-acclaimed smart man, he has yet to learn anything from four years of his vice president’s propensity for monumental verbal gaffes.
The President was assaulting private enterprise once again, essentially portraying it as taking advantage of government infrastructure without making a substantial contribution to same. In shortspeak, he’s claiming that private enterprise is stealing from hardworking American taxpayers, and bragging about it. Why he feels it necessary to make absurd demonizations of business founders is beyond any practical explanation.
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me – because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t – look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own….If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.
The underlying implication of these words is that nobody has the wherewithal to succeed by their own initiative, and that we will all fail if Somebody isn’t there to “lend a hand up”. Isn’t this the mantra of the ghettos that Bill Cosby was railing against recently? Isn’t this the same toxic message disseminated by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton that destroys the initiative of their supporters to rise up and change their own circumstances?
We shouldn’t actually be surprised by this sentiment from our President. His résumé of accomplishments is puny, and utterly bereft of any business experience. As Charles Krauthammer pointed out after the speech, these words were “spoken by a man who never created nor ran as much as a candy store.”
Obama also called it arrogance for business owners to feel as though they have accomplished anything without the blessing and assistance of Mother Government.
I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I’m 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.
First of all, private enterprise is not a person. Who is this person or persons our all-knowing President is referring to? Having never worked a single day in private enterprise, how is he intimately acquainted with what successful entrepreneurs think? He’s setting up a straw man in a business suit, again as Krauthammer pointed out.
Speaking of arrogance, anyone who points their finger and says “Let me tell you something …” is loftily implying they are about to divulge knowledge you don’t have. Yet if you have worked even one day at WalMart, McDonald’s or the local filling station, you could tell Barack Obama something he doesn‘t know.
He continues by pointing out the importance of infrastructure (read government) to business, but his Marxist anti-business leanings cause him to revert to class warfare rhetoric yet again. The man is incapable of making any statement about business without acting as though he has stepped in something your dog left behind.
“Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
Clearly the “Somebody” he’s referring to is government. But nobody in business anywhere is claiming to have built America by themselves (not even Democrat business owners). Simple economics lesson: without the businesses, there is no need for the bridge or road. Don’t businesses pay higher taxes than individuals? Aren’t those taxes used for infrastructure? So private enterprise is not only the principle reason infrastructure is needed, but also the primary financial support for such things. If you doubt this, take a trip to any rural area sometime and note the level of infrastructure where there is no commerce or industry.
Contrary to the President’s assertions, neither are business people claiming that there isn’t an important role that government plays in working together with businesses to create a productive economy. To insinuate otherwise is a disingenuous effort to prey upon the ignorant and those who have not managed to become productive contributors to the economy. If any dictum is true these days, it’s that private entrepreneurs must succeed in spite of suffocating government regulations, fees and taxes.
The President’s latest Tourette’s moment is reliably indicative of his strong Marxist roots being fully intact and, dare I say, salivating at the thought of another four years of power without any accountability. Somebody had better tell him that his red Che Guevara t-shirt is showing.
