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?

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.

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.”

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”.

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?)

(and Obama, in particular)

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.)

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.

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!”

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.

Of course Marx and Engels were themselves children of the Enlightenment.

Islam developed from Judaism and Christianity. Therefore Christians are responsible for this, right?

Yes, but the difference is in the source – what gives the lawgiver that authority.