President Obama’s remarks last week about the dependence of American businesspeople have provoked quite a bit of controversy. In case you’re living in a bubble, here’s what the President said:
“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.”
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.
So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, “you know what, there’s some things we do better together.” That’s how we funded the GI Bill, that’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge and the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet, that’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for president, because I still believe in that idea: You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.
As Yuval Levin points out, the President is in part arguing with a hyperlibertarian straw man who rejects any role for government whatsoever. Au contraire, Levin avers, Obama’s opponents concede that there are certain things government does well:
The Ryan budget, which almost every congressional Republican has voted for, is an attempt precisely to focus the government on achieving what people can’t achieve on their own and on effectively helping the vulnerable and those who cannot help themselves. It envisions a very significant set of public entitlements and programs, in some cases larger than the ones we have now, but tries to bring them into line with the ethic and way of life of our free economy, to make sure they don’t crowd out civil society, and to make them far more efficient and effective than they have been lately. It is a different vision of American life, but not a radically individualist one. It makes for a smaller government on the whole, but it is built on a clear sense that government serves some very crucial purposes.
Jordan Ballor calls our attention to the element missing in the President’s oversimplified government/individual binary. Individuals, he says, are embedded in and dependent upon a series of relationships.
It is in fact true that businesses and entrepreneurs cannot be successful on their own. Indeed, none of us are autonomous or radically independent in this way. The president rightly pointed to the experience that all of us have had of someone nurturing us and helping us grow and develop. The family is the first institution where we experience this community of love, but we also find such expressions in different ways in churches, schools, and workplaces.
As for businesses, their success depends on cultivating a relationship of service and trust with their customers. This reality isn’t groundbreaking to anyone who has experienced success in business (or any other field for that matter). The president also invoked the idea of “giving back,” when he contended, “There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me because they want to give something back.” This idea of “giving back” causes many of the president’s ideological opponents to take umbrage. The concern is that such language depends on an idea of business as having first “taken from” in order to later “give back.”
But such an understanding doesn’t do justice to the real dynamic between business and customer. The relationship is based on voluntary exchange, in which each party gives something to the other. It’s true that in a just exchange nothing more is then owed by either party to the other. But it’s also true within the larger context of human reality that we recognize the gracious nature of such relationships, and can be thankful that we have the ability and freedom to give and receive. In this sense the idea of “giving back” can be understood on the basis of having first been given to rather than having taken from.
We all know at some level that we didn’t get where we are on our own, and that we have an ongoing responsibility and dependence on others for our continuing enjoyment of the goods of human existence.
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith offers an account of the transtion from feudalism to freedom in terms of the changes in relationships of dependence. Where the retainer and the serf are dependent upon the patronage of one lord, the craftsman and the merchant are dependent upon the patronage of numerous customers. They are thus functionally independent, not because they are utterly self-reliant, but because no one can exercise the influence over them that one lord can have over his retainers.
By insisting in an exaggerated fashion on our dependence upon government, by overlooking the ways in which multiple sources of support in civil society and the marketplace afford us a kind of independence, President Obama would, in effect, turn the clock backward. For him, the transaction that seems to matter the most is between the officeholder dispensing what can only amount to patronage and those who look to him for the things they need. Tammany Hall and the various machines that ran Chicago politics come to mind here, But in those days, you could escape from New York and Chicago, seeking greater opportunities and less dependence outside the city limits. What the President seems to have in mind is much greater in scope and much more pervasive in its reach. In squeezing civil society and in effacing the distinction between levels of government, the President’s vision would seem to leave little room for the development or maintenance of a rightly ordered relationship between the individual and the community.
July 18th, 2012 | 2:46 pm
I think the authors are exaggerating the President’s point. This essay makes the same points, though with blunter language, I admit:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-things-rich-people-need-to-stop-saying/
July 18th, 2012 | 3:28 pm
I agree with Ray Ingles, but practically any critique of what Obama said is more credible than what Romney interprets him to be saying: “I’m convinced he wants Americans to be ashamed of success.”
Saying, “You didn’t succeed all on your own,” is in no way equivalent to saying, “You should be ashamed of your success.” It doesn’t even make sense (not that it’s supposed to).
July 18th, 2012 | 3:35 pm
David, he didn’t say “you didn’t succeed all on your own.” That would be perfectly reasonable. He said if you have a business, “you didn’t build that!” He attributes private sector success to “someone else,” namely government! I think Romney is exactly right that Obama and his policies are discouraging success and rewarding dependence on government, and think this article is right to notice that this model of government is absolutely turning the clock back. Far from following Obama’s own campaign slogan of “Forward,” he is actually the most retrogressive, backward president in the history of this country – and it’s not even close.
July 18th, 2012 | 3:45 pm
So since I am unsuccessful, it must be because the government didn’t build me a company to make me rich? Why didn’t they?
I would like one focused on little ponies and cute puppies, please.
July 18th, 2012 | 4:06 pm
If he really believed that, he would be zeroing out welfare. After all, the business owners did nothing special — any old welfare recipient could do the same thing because of having the same government.
July 18th, 2012 | 4:14 pm
David, he didn’t say “you didn’t succeed all on your own.” That would be perfectly reasonable. He said if you have a business, “you didn’t build that!”
Johnny T.,
I don’t think it is right to pick out little pieces and present them as the whole. Obama said, “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own.”
On the one hand, Jeff Bezos “built” Amazon.com. But there would be no Amazon.com without the Internet and without the US Mail, UPS, and FedEX. And customers.
The idea, it seems to me, is “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” as opposed to “government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem,” or “taxation is theft.”
July 18th, 2012 | 4:17 pm
Even if the “you didn’t build that” is taken in the most restricted sense possible to mean the roads and bridges themselves, who does he think DID build them?
Taxpayers, which include, not exclude, people who build businesses, that’s who built them.
Any way you look at it, it was very poorly expressed, and can be criticized on the grounds Levin uses.
July 18th, 2012 | 4:54 pm
I have to admit I am sympathetic to the idea that emphasizes “we’re all in this together” and that we all benefit from certain goods being provided on a collective basis to benefit everybody, and that there is a bit of hubris in the stereotypical rich man who says: “I pulled myself up from poverty and single handedly built my empire”.
But am I the only one who finds it odd that he seems to suggest that the government “created” the middle class, just as it created the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate bridge and the moon launch? Can a government really create the middle class just by passing the GI Bill and similar programs?
So if we take all the socially devastated people in our society and send them to college for free, will they now be the “middle class” too? Or will they even have the internal discipline and social capital necessary to function in a college setting? Don’t we need all those socially mediating institutions — the family, the church, the boy scouts, etc, to get to the place where government policies will even make the slightest difference? In which case, shouldn’t the first thing government should be doing is supporting those institutions?
That’s the thing I find puzzling. Take all the credit you want for building infrastructure and regulating finances and industries and all the goods that flow from them. But how do you get from that well-earned credit to the suggestion that similarly the government can (and did) socially engineer something as complex, morally dependent and fragile as the middle class?
July 18th, 2012 | 5:10 pm
Doesn’t government hire businesses to build the roads and bridges? Those are contracted out. If everything in the US was built by the US Corps of Engineers or some such entity, perhaps like the New Deal’s CWA, then we could talk about government building roads and bridges. You and I and other taxpayers paid to have those built, but we didn’t build them. Companies who specialize in building roads and bridges built them and those are owned by someone. Who built those businesses?
July 18th, 2012 | 5:50 pm
I agree with Ray Ingles, but practically any critique of what Obama said is more credible than what Romney interprets him to be saying: “I’m convinced he wants Americans to be ashamed of success.”
I think you’re right about one thing: Obama does not want Americans to be ashamed of success.
He just wants them to reject capitalism.
He recognizes that he’d be better off if America were socialist/communist – that is, if it had a central planner planning everything (from the economy to personal lifestyle choices).
He of course plans on being the central planner.
And he is far more educated than the people he’s talking (down) to; he understands (as they do not) that people don’t work for free – when they aren’t working for money, they work for quid pro quo, for favors. And the guy who is THE central planner is THE guy who has the favors.
Want an Obamacare waiver? How much is it worth to you? (That’s what they mean when they say “Chicago style”.)
So, yes, let’s all pretend that it is the ability to access public goods that makes the successful businessman more successful than his classmates (who presumably did not have equal access to the government – its programs, roads, and institutions).
And let’s all pretend that there’s something logical about trusting the government to correct this inequality – the same inequality that the government apparently created in the first place (by giving the Mitt Romneys of the world their success).
It couldn’t be that the successful man did something right, or you did something wrong. It certainly couldn’t be that families that take care of each other, plan for the future, and work hard have a natural advantage over families where each generation spends whatever it has, neglects its future, and spends its kids’ future.
It’s just so much easier to believe that one’s own lack of success is someone else’s fault, isn’t it? Just the way Obama keeps insisting that his failures are all because of Bush, or ATM machines, or the weather, or voters who refuse to cooperate…..
July 18th, 2012 | 5:51 pm
Can a government really create the middle class just by passing the GI Bill and similar programs?
If it could, then why hasn’t Obama done so?
July 18th, 2012 | 11:12 pm
There are good and bad points to the speech, and I see it as a missed opportunity for him (and us). He does seem to have set up some kind of monstrous and cartoonish Rich Guy straw man. All that stuff about the widespread usefulness of highways, bridges and teachers is bloody obvious, as Basil Fawlty would say. It is a pity he credited the government alone with providing the support that Rich Guy needed, and did not mention the mediating institutions and people described by Sally Rogers.
His comment about us rising and falling as one nation and one people made me think he was briefly flirting with real statesmanship, appealing to the better angels of all of us Americans. The idea that successful people should “give back” to the unfortunate (out of gratitude to the country and not guilt) could have been construed as downright patriotic or even Christian—if he hadn’t tossed in that clownish and divisive Daddy Warbucks conception of American business people. No wonder they are suspicious about his meaning.
By the way, I think Democrats really should keep off the topic of the creation of the Internet. He seems to have rather fuzzy notions about its original purpose.
July 19th, 2012 | 5:54 am
In the days of feudalism, this was called “noblesse oblige”, which insists that the rich have to share their personal wealth with the poor.
The problem with Obama’s argument is that he assumes the government is sharing it’s wealth with us. Actually, Americans enter a contract together and then devise a way for things to be done…
in other words, WE are the government.
And it ignores that many of these things were done not by a benevolent government that takes care of us, but by ourselves: e.g. locally run and funded schools (or church schools run by local churches), local roads are often state, not federally funded, etc.
July 19th, 2012 | 7:05 am
Sally Rogers wrote
“But am I the only one who finds it odd that he seems to suggest that the government “created” the middle class…”
Well, I would not say the government built the middle class, but the middle class used the government to establish itself. It did so, most dramatically, perhaps, at the outset of the French Revolution, when the Third Estate (the representatives of the middle class) declared itself the National Assembly and said, in effect, to the other two estates, the nobility and the clergy, “We represent t he nation; you represent only yourselves and your private interests.” . To constitute itself as the nation, it proceeded to assume power and abolish all privileges that, in its eyes, placed the ruling minority above and outside the nation. All the old systems of land tenure, all the guilds that controlled the municipal corporations were swept away. Henceforth, “the law afforded comfortable quarters for various kinds of groups, provided (but notice this) that the group’s one and only object was the making of pecuniary gain. Recent writers have noticed it as a paradox that the State saw no harm in the selfish people who wanted dividends, while it had an intense dread of the comparatively unselfish people who would combine with some religious, charitable, literary, scientific, artistic purpose in view.” (F W Maitland)
The same process occurred, less dramatically, perhaps, throughout the West.
In that sense, the government did, indeed, create the bourgeoisie; more, it created a bourgeois republic.
July 19th, 2012 | 9:11 am
Blake –
This from the guy who said with an apparently straight face that it was Enlightenment thinkers that proposed the ‘command economy’. I’m afraid I don’t trust any claims you might make about who wants ‘central planning’.
Points #4 and #5 from the link in the first comment on this thread.
July 19th, 2012 | 9:32 am
Michael PS Well, I would not say the government built the middle class, but the middle class used the government to establish itself. It did so, most dramatically, perhaps, at the outset of the French Revolution…
An American middle class was well into swing by the time of the French Revolution, at least in the northeast, and it didn’t need much government help at all. Even Britain had a middle class by then. In fact, I’ve read in several places that a middle class predates the enlightenment, with the rise of merchants in the cities, who lay between the upper class (nobility) and the lower class (peasants, serfs, etc). And those guys certainly didn’t have much government help, unless one reckons the financial incompetence of the nobility as “government help”. See, for example,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_class
July 19th, 2012 | 10:43 am
I think it would help if people didn’t play the role of Romney campaign strategists and look for phrases in a single speech by Obama that they could use to discredit him. It is clear from Obama’s record as senator and president that he does not believe people should be ashamed of success, or that Bill Gates doesn’t deserve credit for Microsoft.
A couple of days ago, McCain was asked if Romney’s tax returns were the reason he picked Palin instead of Romney. McCain said no, it was because Palin was the better candidate.
Some gleefully took this to be McCain saying Palin was better than Romney. But . . .
Now sometimes politicians have to issue “clarifications” or say they “misspoke” when they accidentally say something they really mean, it causes them problems, and they have to claim they never meant it in the first place. But in this case I think it’s clear what McCain meant about Palin in the context of his original remarks. He was definitely not saying anything even approaching an endorsement of Palin over Romney in the current race.
It may be fun to comb through things a politician says and seize on them to make the worst possible case against him or her. But that is the kind of thing campaign strategists do, and it’s not entirely honest. It’s unfortunate that so much of politics is putting the worst possible interpretation one what the other side says.
July 19th, 2012 | 10:58 am
Richard A. Epstein’s article, “Elizabeth Warren’s Sloppy Progressivism” should be required reading for anyone interested in this subject. It was written on January 10, 2012 but is even more current, so to speak, today since President Barack Obama has made the subject his own.
Professor Epstein provides clarity and correction to some of the comments provided here.
July 19th, 2012 | 11:12 am
On the subject of the development of the middle class: See “A History of the Modern World” (fifth edition) by R. R. Palmer and Joel Colton, Chapter 1, “The Rise of Europe, Section 2 “The Early Middle Ages …”, especially “The Rise of Towns and Commerce” pg. 25. It is available on most used books sites.
If any of those who comment here is interested, I will post some of the content, if asked.
July 19th, 2012 | 12:47 pm
@David Nickol,
This thread isnt’ about Mitt, but about the President’s belief that all success stems from the federal government. His phrase, “You didn’t build that,” belies a European style market socialism that even in Europe is fallng away.
And you appear blissfully unaware that firms like Amazon took all of the risk;unlike Solyndra, Chrysler, or Freddie Mac, Uncle Same wasn’t there to bail them out if things went south.
July 19th, 2012 | 1:34 pm
Before the Revolution, the middle class availed itself of charters purchased from the Crown or other local ruler, or, as in the case of the Italian communes, or the Haseatic League established themselves as the government of free cities, usually governed by a mercantile aristocracy, under vague Imperial suzerainty.
They either obtained privileges and, especially, immunities from government, or themselves constituted the government. The Mayor’s Court in the City of London and the Tolzy Court of Bristol survived until 1971
July 19th, 2012 | 2:00 pm
[...] civil society, dependence on government, Obama, taken out of context, You didn't build that 0 Joseph Knippenberg offers an astute analysis of why President Obama’s “You didn’t build that” [...]
July 19th, 2012 | 2:15 pm
. . . . the President’s belief that all success stems from the federal government.
JP,
I think that is a distortion. If one finds it necessary to put a title on Obama’s speech, “You Didn’t Get There on Your Own” would be far more apt than “You Didn’t Build That.” I just did a check of the Forbes list of the top 2000 global companies, and the United States tops the list with 524, followed by Japan with 258. Is the dominance of the US a statistical fluke? No, things are the way they are because the United States provides much more opportunity than any other country. Is it all because of government? Of course not, but government is definitely part of it.
I am surprised that the conservatives seem to be abandoning their claim to own patriotism and ceding it to the liberals. Don’t people believe what makes America great is its Constitution and form of government? Didn’t the Founding Fathers give us something valuable which still exists today? Success in the United States is often referred to as achieving “the American dream.” Do conservatives honestly maintain that America as a whole, including its form of government, is no longer anything special, and the country is made up of individuals who somehow managed to succeed in spite of the government? How can you believe in “American exceptionalism,” which so many conservatives do (and liberals, too) without believing there is something special about our form of government, and how can you believe our form of government is special but the actual government is not?
By the way, how do people who read this as a claim that government is everything fit in this line: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.” Do you really think he meant, “There was a great public school teacher somewhere in your life, paid for by government?” Obama was focusing on the importance of government, but I think it’s clear his message was not, “You didn’t do it; the government did it.”
July 19th, 2012 | 3:27 pm
David
You are arguing against a strawman just like Obama likes to do. In his world everyone is either a statist like he is or an Ayn Rand devotee. Of course there is a role for government. The Constitution was written by people who wanted a stronger central government. They were also concerned about what that government might do with unchecked power.
Obama has been consistent for many years in seeing society as having a choice between either (1) unamalgamated individuals scrambling in an unplanned way to exploit or survive or (2)working in a unified way in the manner approved by (his) government. That’s his worldview. Your attempt to rewrite his words and intent into something more acceptable to all of us is admirable but it is clearly not what he believes.
July 19th, 2012 | 3:36 pm
Conservatives and, I think, all people of good will, do believe there is something very special about our form of government properly understood as a system of checks and balances and separation of powers. But any form of government can be abused by persons who come into power with the announced objective of bringing about undefined change.
The article I recommended – by Richard A. Epstein, “Elizabeth Warren’s Sloppy Progressivism” analyses the ideas that she and President Obama share, ideas that fit well with making such a statement as, “… you didn’t build it.”
Prof. Epstein teaches that individuals who succeed do indeed understand “the key proposition that personal gains result only through cooperation with others.” These “cooperative mechanisms” – hiring others through a variety of voluntary transactions to “locate, design, finance, construct, and market that project” benefit a large and ever-increasing circle of other persons, “everyone else whose opportunities for trade have expanded because of the new wealth created.”
As far as the highways and other government projects supported by taxes paid by all citizens are concerned: “Is it possible to think that the ‘us’ who have paid for the roads are only those people who did not move their goods to market on the public highway? Or did not use and consume the goods that were so moved? If so, then we have a truly absurd situation in which millions use road that no one really pays for…. We are left with the notion that common resources are paid for out of public funds….” “Public funds” earned and paid as taxes to the government to use for the benefit of all citizens.
“The ‘you’ referred to by Ms. Warren and by President Barack Obama is a ‘you’ “standing in opposition to all the other good people in society on whom ‘you’ choose to free ride.” That was the unavoidable implication supported by the angry, aggressive tone used in making both of the speeches under discussion – Mr. Warren’s in the Hoover Institute article and President Obama’s in this first things discussion.
As far as the “good teacher” is concerned, “most businesses engage extensively in the education of their employees, whether through on the job instruction or the financing of education through third parties. … In addition individuals and their families finance much of their own education, especially those who go onto higher education. For public education, the countless employers in the labor market have paid at least their fair share in property taxes and income taxes to support the education of others, including the badly run public loan subsidy programs with high rates of default. …”.
My summary of passages and truncated sentences cannot begin to do justice to the actual article which can be found on the Hoover Institution web site – a Google search brings it up easily.
The speech given by President Obama, preceded by his appointee, Elizabeth Warren, presents his and her political philosophy. American government, “of the people, by the people, and for the people” will not long last if those entrusted with high public office do not understand how to govern a free people.
Of course, free enterprise and voluntary transactions require “a strong and coherent government” – one inhabited by office holders who understand that they are supported by the citizens. Government cannot create wealth. It is its responsibility to provide the framework within which motivated individuals can do so.
July 19th, 2012 | 6:42 pm
This from the guy who said with an apparently straight face that it was Enlightenment thinkers that proposed the ‘command economy’. I’m afraid I don’t trust any claims you might make about who wants ‘central planning’.
This doesn’t make any sense to me.
The Enlightenment is a philosophical movement that gets its name from its belief that it has found “real” truth (in other words, its adherents claim to have found a truth that displaces all rival ideological claims). And this philosophical tradition is in fact the tradition that has given us all centrally-planned top-down Utopian plans. Just as you need some sort of God-religion to have the “divine right of kings”, you need the secular Enlightenment to get any sort of Utopia – whether fascist or communist, the idea that elites are “more Enlightened” and therefore should impose a scientifically-proven “best” way to live on the rest of society is an idea that is alien to all but the Enlightenment.
Obama is of course well in this tradition – see his interference with the automotive industry, health industry, and solar energy industries.
The statement “you didn’t build that” reflects this ideological commitment. He genuinely believes that, while he himself of course really earned his achievements, there’s no double standard at all in arguing out of the same mouth that you didn’t.
Never mind that you did a lot more to make your business happen, while his singlehandedly killing Bin Laden or winning the Nobel Peace Prize didn’t involve nearly so much effort or risk. He’s Enlightened. You’re not.
Without this philosophical leap of faith, there’s no way to get to European-style socialist policies.
July 20th, 2012 | 7:49 am
Blake
The belief that all wisdom comes from the lawgiver is very old and long pre-dates the Enlightenment. According to Eustatius, Pelasgus, the first king of Argos, taught the Greeks how to eat acorns and how, before that, they grazed the land like cattle.
Lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta is praised for regulating their dress “No alteration is to be tolerated either in the type of cloth used or in the shape of the garments.” “He regulated in the same way the food of both the citizens and the slaves.” “He banished poets and forbade soft and effeminate music.”
It would be easy to multiply examples quite as absurd.
Now, the phiosophes were passionate admirers of the ancients and contemptuous of all that came after them.
July 20th, 2012 | 8:57 am
Blake –
Enlightenment thinkers pretty much invented the term ‘laissez-faire’.
It was communist theorizers like Marx and Engels who thought they had a ‘historical science’ and proposed command economies.
It’s like blaming Christianity for executing raped women as ‘adulteresses’ since Muslims do it and Christians and Muslims are both monotheists.
July 20th, 2012 | 1:23 pm
“Don’t people believe what makes America great is its Constitution and form of government? Didn’t the Founding Fathers give us something valuable which still exists today? Success in the United States is often referred to as achieving “the American dream.” ”
@David Nickol,
Nice try, David. We’re not debating whether or not there should be a government. But, in an age when the federal government consumes $4 trillion of our nation’s weatlth, and when federal regulations are numbered in the 100,000 of pages, there are still those few who believe that the federal government governs best when it governs least. In the time of the Founders, 99% of our laws were written at the state and local levels. Today, most local and state employees are just appendages of the federal government. Today, the upper middle class workers works for the federal government until July (that is his income is consumed by taxes until July 7).
And finally, it should be noted that the federal government doesn’t really “produce” anything of value anymore (but, it does re-distribute wealth very well). Few if any research organizations that actually produce anything of value are public. But, all federal organizations rely of private firms to keep their operations going. About every single major breakthrough during the last 30 years in communications, areospace, data processing, energy, machine tools, and electronics has come from the private sector. Heck, NASA doesn’t even do space anymore. Most federal and private organizations either use foreign nations or private firms to launch their satellites. But, NASA still consumes $20 billion in taxpayers wealth.
What the Founders proposed and what President Obama believes are diametrically opposed to eachother. When the President was still an unknown state senator he was complained that the Founders enacted a set of “negative rights”. He, as state senator proposed that the federal government should be endowed with “positive rights” not encumbered by the Bill of Rights and Federalism. Like President Clinton, President Obama was very impressed with the “positive rights” of governments in Europe. The right to distribute large junks of private wealth, plan job creation, drive industrial planning, manage health care, education, child care, religious activity, and public speech were just a few of the positive rights that then State Senator Obama believed in.
And in many ways, his dream has come true. The US has the most progressive tax system in the world (the wealthiest 5% pay 50% of all taxes, the poorest 20% pay 0); we have the highest corporate tax system in the world; we spend per capita more on K-12 education than any nation on earth; during the last 10 years we’ve spent over $2 trillion on “infrastructure”; our disability rolls are growing faster than any time in history; we have the largest subsidized food stamp program in the world; and we now are approaching a single payer health system. And since 2008 per capita family wealth has fallen. Since 2000-2001 (the last time we had a balanced budget), the federal government has grown from $1.8 trillion to $3.8 trillion now. And since then incomes are falling. It is no coincidence that as more wealth is “spread around” the nation is becoming poorer. This wasn’t the intent of the Founders. But, it is the intent of Progressives.
July 21st, 2012 | 6:29 am
It was communist theorizers like Marx and Engels who thought they had a ‘historical science’ and proposed command economies.
I find it amusing that today’s children of the Enlightenment have to deny their own history.
Of course Marx and Engels were themselves children of the Enlightenment. Communism didn’t just pop up out of nothing.
Their errors show how the scientific method works. They did nothing wrong. They accepted all the correct assumptions and followed all the proper procedures. They came to conclusions that were logical and consistent. Their only error was relying on the flawed assumptions that are at the root of every major catastrophe ever spawned by the Enlightenment – the idea that a handful of elites can and should rely on a myth of “progress” to manipulate and radically experiment on the whole world, to try to force it to conform to a mythological vision of “perfection”.
Which brings us right back to Obama again.
July 21st, 2012 | 6:35 am
The belief that all wisdom comes from the lawgiver is very old and long pre-dates the Enlightenment
Yes, but the difference is in the source – what gives the lawgiver that authority.
July 21st, 2012 | 3:17 pm
Blake –
Islam developed from Judaism and Christianity. Therefore Christians are responsible for this, right?
July 21st, 2012 | 5:58 pm
“I think it would help if people didn’t play the role of Romney campaign strategists and look for phrases in a single speech by Obama that they could use to discredit him. ”
Actually, that’s not the game. The “game” most of us are playing is the “what does that sound like to me?” game. I think most people admit that Obama does not intend to communicate that government gets all the credit. However, in the context of the last four or five years of experience with Obama, it “sounds to us” like Obama is so reflexively inclined to over-credit the government, due to his naturally highly statist worldview, that he does it at every opportunity. Is this news? No. Is it worth noting that a major party political candidate (let alone the sitting President) at least gives this perception at nearly every possible opportunity? Some of us think so.
July 23rd, 2012 | 4:34 am
Blake and Ray Ingles
Tocqueville had this to say, in a speech to the National Assembly on 12 September 1848
“And finally, gentlemen, liberty. There is one thing which strikes me above all. It is that the Ancien Régime, which doubtless differed in many respects from that system of government which the socialists call for (and we must realize this) was, in its political philosophy, far less distant from socialism than we had believed. It is far closer to that system than we. The Ancien Régime, in fact, held that wisdom lay only in the State and that the citizens were weak and feeble beings who must forever be held by the hand, for fear they fall and hurt themselves. It held that it was necessary to obstruct, thwart, restrain individual freedom, that to secure an abundance of material goods it was imperative to regulate industry and impede free competition. The Ancien Régime believed, on this point, exactly as the socialists of today do. It was the French Revolution which denied this. Gentlemen, what is it that has broken the fetters which, from all sides, had arrested the free movement of men, goods and ideas? What has restored to man his individual greatness, which is his real greatness? The French Revolution itself!”
July 23rd, 2012 | 9:25 am
Blake –
Of course Marx and Engels were themselves children of the Enlightenment.
Islam developed from Judaism and Christianity. Therefore Christians are responsible for this, right?
It isn’t just that communism developed from the Enlightenment.
If we were talking about a genuine fork – as Islam is a fork from Judaism and/or Christianity – then your analogy would have merit.
But we aren’t talking about a fork: the Enlightenment tradition (and Obama, in particular) has embraced, not rejected, the command economy idea.
Which is what we were talking about: “You didn’t build that” is a justification for rejecting free markets in favor of ideas that are top-down or “command economy” ideas.
So, to answer your question, if Islam developed out of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and then Christianity embraced what Islam developed, then, yes, we would have to “own” whatever it was we’d embraced, even if it were politically inconvenient.
Christianity has not embraced Islamic ideas. But Obama has embraced the idea of top-down economic decision-making, and the statement “you didn’t build that” (when read in context) was clearly intended as an attack on free markets and on capitalism.
July 23rd, 2012 | 11:50 am
Blake –
In the parlance of Wikipedia… [citation needed]. (Or is this a “no true
ScotsmanEnlightenment thinker” dealie?)You claim that Obama wants to be ‘the central planner’, taking bribes from anyone who wants to get anything done. Let’s see some evidence of that beyond cherry picking speech quotes. Which of his policies do you think are intended to advance that agenda? (Are there any policies of his which you think go against that, btw? You can blame it on political maneuvering or hidng his true intentions, but I’m curious if you’ve seen anything like that.)
July 23rd, 2012 | 7:48 pm
the Enlightenment tradition… has embraced, not rejected, the command economy idea.
In the parlance of Wikipedia… [citation needed]. (Or is this a “no trueScotsmanEnlightenment thinker” dealie?)
I don’t know where you get any of this. Perhaps you and I are using the same words in different ways.
I use capitalism to refer to economic constructs that define what is fair and just in terms of property rights – allowing each person to keep what is theirs. Anything a person builds, creates, or earns is theirs. This is the incentive that makes people work hard, get educated, and apply their creativity and intelligence. If someone else wants a share of what you have made, they have to make a claim based on property rights – for instance, if you want to say that Susie should share her earnings with the rest of society, and the basis of that claim is that Susie uses the roads, then to make Susie pay, you have to charge for road use (through gasoline taxes, tolls, or some other tax that applies to all people who choose to use that road).
But what Obama is arguing relies on a different vision of what constitutes “equality”, and what constitutes “fairness”. In his vision, Susie does not have the right to claim the property she has built as solely her own, because she used the road to build it. Therefore, the owner of the road – in this case the government – claims a share of the ownership.
This is a drastically different vision – one that only makes sense in the context of a command economy.
ONLY within an economic vision where “fairness” and “equality” is defined in terms of end result – all people having the predetermined correct percentage or ratio of affluence or well-being – can it make sense to wait until Susie has made her profit before deciding whether and how much to charge her for the use of the road.
Everyone uses the same road. But not everyone builds a business worth anything. A gas tax charges everyone for the use of the road in a way that is defined as “equality” if we are using the capitalist vision of equality – that is, equality of opportunity. Everyone pays for the road equally. In the capitalist vision, Susie owns her business and has the right to claim credit for building it, because although it is true that she used government roads, she also paid for those roads already – so the owner of the road does not have the right to claim a share of her profits.
But Obama rejects that vision. This speech of his – like many he has made before – defines “fairness” not in terms of equality of opportunity, but in terms that justify (demand) redistribution: Susie ended up with more than everyone else, so Susie needs to share. This vision can only be logical if one discounts Susie’s labor, creative vision, and intellectual accomplishment – because those things are the variables that explain why Susie ended up with more than the other people who used those same roads – and this is what Obama’s speech is about: his argument is that Susie should not think that her hard work, her creative accomplishments, or her clever thinking are valuable, or should be rewarded. Those things are not responsible for her success, so she “didn’t build that”.
July 24th, 2012 | 9:12 am
Blake, please list the passages from the President’s speech – full text here – that support your analysis.
I also note that you didn’t link any of your purported motivations to Enlightenment thinking. “Command economy” maybe, but you gave no support whatsoever for your contention that “the Enlightenment tradition… has embraced, not rejected, the command economy idea.”
July 24th, 2012 | 7:48 pm
Blake, please list the passages from the President’s speech – full text here – that support your analysis.
I don’t see why that is necessary.
Why are you changing the subject? Why do you not respond to what I have said? If I am wrong, tell me where and how I am wrong.
July 25th, 2012 | 10:49 am
Blake, you’re claiming that Obama has a certain viewpoint, and working out the consequences of that viewpoint. I’m asking you justify step 1, the conclusion that you’ve correctly identified the President’s viewpoint and motivations.
In the speech, for example, the only words I can find that even tangentially appear that they might support your contention are “we… ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more.” It seems rather a jump from that to “Susie does not have the right to claim the property she has built as solely her own”.
How exactly do you make that connection?
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