Which “adult citizen” was the President lecturing? He made the remarks in a speech he gave at a campaign event. Near as I can tell, he was trying to disabuse us of the vain and prideful thoughts that our success in life is attributable only to our own industry and excellence, and that the work of the people in the form of good collaborative work, including good governance, had nothing to do with our prosperity. Christians of all people should have his back, not least because the alternative he was presenting was manifestly NOT some sort of government-is-God shtick.

Here’s what came a paragraph or so before the infamous remark:

“I’ve got a different idea. I do believe we can cut — we’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts. We can make some more cuts in programs that don’t work, and make government work more efficiently. (Applause.) Not every government program works the way it’s supposed to. And frankly, government can’t solve every problem. If somebody doesn’t want to be helped, government can’t always help them. Parents — we can put more money into schools, but if your kids don’t want to learn it’s hard to teach them.”

Then he has this to say afterwards, “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 all I hear the President saying is that human collaboration, including collaboration through good government, has played an important role in the success and prosperity of many Americans. In calling his remarks “fatuous,” are you saying that President Obama is obviously correct about the legitimate function of good governance in contributing to social and economic success in this land?

The proof that his critique of the radical individualism rampant in our culture actually hit a nerve is the unhinged response he’s been getting for saying something so “fatuous.”

But Thomas wasn’t a government official lecturing an adult citizen about that which there is every reason to believe he already knew quite as well as instructor did. I think the point has been made recently that context is important.

by the way, has thomas aquinas ever said anything fatuous?

“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.” ["You didn't build that" comes next.]

For me, the offensive part is in the middle. As I read it, the President goes beyond ideas of “we’re in this together” and “success has many fathers” to state that my success depends more on the help I received than the effort I put into the business.

Perhaps he was merely inartful in constructing his argument, and perhaps I’m pulling more from his choice of words than he intended. But the whole tenor of that speech, and especially the follow-up conversations, leads me to believe otherwise.

In that case we’re back to fatuous. If that’s all he was saying, then he was disabusing the person he was talking to of something he never said, and rather patronizingly, to boot. Does anyone other than sociopaths or movie or cartoon characters with funny mustaches claim that?

You can make it come out not to say that he was claiming that business owners didn’t build their own businesses (and I agree, he didn’t say that) but you can’t make it come out to anything that indicates that he wasn’t to some degree insulting or undermining a class of people he doesn’t really want to credit without at least taking with one hand what he’s pretending to give with the other.

I have thought since the beginning that Obama was making an even broader point than people acknowledge. He said,

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. Some invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that . . . .

The line about the great teacher seems to have been overlooked in the haste to misinterpret “you didn’t build that.” I think Obama was saying nobody who has gotten anywhere can take credit for all of their accomplishments. He wasn’t just talking about infrastructure. He was talking about everything. I didn’t watch the Emmy Awards last night, but I am willing to bet few if any of the recipients didn’t have a list of people to thank. I certainly haven’t reached a great pinnacle of success, but I could make quite a list of people and institutions without which I wouldn’t be where I am today. I think Obama meant all of that.