While this has the potential to become quite contentious, permit me to offer a couple of points.
Some of my friends and I disagree a bit on the essence of the money quote, the “if you have a business, you didn’t build that” thing. Their take is that he meant it as he said it. And my take is “yes, but…”
And here is my “yes but…”
The entire quote runs to about two paragraphs. It is clear that his meaning is that no one who succeeds can take all the credit for having succeeded, because the government made his success possible.
His semi-inarticulate blunder — the money quote — amounts to a Freudian slip of epic proportions.
Yeah, sure, he meant to say that those who built a business didn’t build the roads and bridges, but what he really means — under all the awkward wording — is that you didn’t build that. He goes on at length to make his “point” that without the government’s help, without the government’s having established all the infrastructure, you would have had nowhere to stand in order to accomplish your success. (He conveniently omits that every freeloading loser had that same infrastructure available.)
His “money quote” is the clearest, most succinct distillation of what he means here.
Yeah, he slipped up in trying to make the point, and gave his opponents a super clean sound bite, but that sound bite — even with all its “out of context” framing — is exactly what he meant.
The honest interpretation boils down to exactly that sound bite. It doesn’t matter what hisintended wording was, what he actually said is what he actually means.
And this goes deeper…
He’s desperately trying to make the point that no one is responsible for his own success.
And why is that, Doktor Freud?
It’s because he is not, himself, responsible for his own success.
He’s a “made man.” And not just figuratively speaking, either. He is an entirely manufactured phenomenon. There’s no “there” there. He’s a story, not a person.
Excellent!
Makes me think of the other day when Obama presumptuously apologized for the rain that messes up ladies’ hairdos.
I got news for Obama (who is DESPERATELY trying to wean himself off his two teleprompters).
GOD makes it rain on the wicked AND the good!
Obama can no more take credit (or ask forgiveness for it as though it was from him) for rain than he could for making the oceans stop rising (or falling, whichever).
~~~~~~~~~
Romney was sensational in Pennsylvania.
His theme was Barack Obama’s revelatory “you didn’t build that” speech.
Romney spoke without teleprompter or notes, something Obama rarely does without getting into trouble.
He was, everyone agreed, passionate and articulate.
It seems that Obama’s attack on entrepreneurs and job creators, and his baldly stated conviction that everyone owes everything to government, was the spark that Romney needed.
The National Republican Congressional Committee’s ad about it:
Any American government at every level (with a few rare exceptions such as the Sea Bees and Army Corps of Engineers,) builds almost nothing. Our governments (local, state and national,) typically farm the work out to government contractors, who are private sector businesses.
Again the ultra-conservative propaganda service takes Obama’s statements completely out of context. What he was saying was simple: Business requires the services of government to succeed. They require the services of public school to educate the employees they once had—before they off-shored so many of the jobs. (Or at least the needed education the was made possible by government grants to charter schools, universities, and students.) Many businesses required government contracts and incentives to get started—before they discovered that the incentives available in communist China were more lucrative. Etc., etc., etc.
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
Your theory is so full of holes it could come from the Swiss.
Which came first, Liberal1, the paved roads and bridges or the Model A? What help did the government give Henry Ford, who failed time after time until he designed the assembly line? Edison started out with $130,000.00 in private donations, not from the government. What help did the government give him, or Alexander Graham Bell, in the creation of their inventions?
And public schools are not the perview of the federal government. They are funded by the localities where they exist. Same with the police and fire departments that Obama loves to refer to. Remember, for almost 200 years there was no federal Department of Education. Local taxpayers paying for local schools, fire departments and police departments. A concept you can’t seem to grasp.
History is not your forte.
@retire05:
Retiro5, the lib1 is aping the talking point du jour.
When obama goes ”off teleprompter” his often unmasks his real beliefs.
Like ”the police acted stupidly,” or ”we have to spread the wealth around” or this one.
Fact is Olympian swimmer Phelps didn’t build a pool, didn’t put the water in any pool.
BUT thousands of others who didn’t either used those pools to accomplish nothing but a good time for themselves.
ONLY Phelps put in the HOURS and WEEKS and MONTHS and YEARS of hard work to accomplish anything at all.
And there was NO GUARANTEE!
He might have had bad days.
There might have been other, better swimmers.
He could have failed.
All the risk and all the reward go to him.
Everybody who filled the pools, built the pools and enjoyed the pools can sit back and bask in his glory, but they did NOT give anything to him.
Once again, the IDIOT who never even had a “Lemonade Stand” tries to ACT like he knows all about operating ANY sort of business…. and comes off sounding like the IDIOT he truly is….
@ Liberal1…. We do not have to “try” and make him sound like a buffoon.. he does THAT all by himself….
and by the way, “Businesses” started and ran here, BEFORE we even HAD a “government” set up, so why should we NEED them, to Operate?? Get real…. Government WAS ( not currently is) supposed to SERVE US, and not the OTHER way around!!! YOU may “need” government oversight to be able to eat, breathe, and use the Toilet… but don’t assume the rest of us do.
@Hankster58: It’s simple really, how does the government generate revenue?? They don’t!! They tax and spend.
@Liberal1 (objectivity): Let’s be honest OK? Does government generate revenue? Or, do they tax and spend??
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
Out of context? I suppose this will be the defense against everything stupid Obama says from now on. Or rather, a continuation of that defense, considering I’ve seen you and Greg both make that claim for numerous other Obama quotes.
Gotta love Zombie over at PJMedia.
She’s knocked it out of the park on this issue.
http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2012/07/18/the-ultimate-takedown-of-obamas-you-didnt-build-that-speech/
[L]et’s clear away the irrelevant government expenditures and list just the ones noted by Obama and Warren:
Department of Defense 18.74%
Department of Transportation 2.05%
Department of Education 1.32%
Department of Homeland Security 1.21%
Department of Justice 0.67%
National Science Foundation 0.20%
TOTAL: 23.4%
[W]hat Obama and Warren are really stating is this:
1. Only one-fourth of your federal tax dollars go to projects and programs that benefit the general public and entrepreneurs; the other three-fourths are essentially a complete waste, or are at best optional.
Which of course is exactly what fiscal conservatives have been arguing all along.
So yeah, I agree with Obama: Let’s slash the federal budget by 75%, and only fund services and programs that directly serve the public good.
2. The Wealthy Already Pay Far More Than Their “Fair Share”
If we stick to Obama and Warren’s “essentials only” budget, we can eliminate all taxes for 99% of Americans, and even lower taxes for the top 1%, and still have enough to pay for defense, transportation, public safety, education and all the rest.
How?
Because the top 1% of all taxpayers — the wealthy elite businesspeople who benefit from roads and schools and firefighters — pay about 37% of all federal taxes, far more than enough to cover the essentials, plus interest on the debt and plenty of extras besides.
3. Obama’s and Warren’s speeches are actually making an argument for increased local taxes. And yet they and their audiences somehow imagine that the arguments given are a legitimate rationale for increased federal taxes.
Obama and Warren have intentionally conflated local taxes with federal taxes.
In most localities across the country, public education, police and firefighters, and street repair are primarily paid for by property taxes, local sales taxes, and state taxes.
Federal grants can supplement local funds, but rarely is a school district or a police department propped up entirely with federal money.
4. Obama: “Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”
Obama is sorely mistaken in claiming that the Internet was created “so that all the companies could make money” off it.
Actually, the Internet was created to facilitate defense-related research as well as to strengthen military command-and-control capabilities.
It was most definitely not created “so that all the companies could make money,” as a very early ARPANet handbook explained:
She’s got so much more!
Ooops.
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
What Obama was doing was forwarding State-ist propaganda poorly. He was trying to infer that everyone is dependent on government, which is a way to make all good little socialists feel better about the government making them even more dependent on government. Socialist elite view the citizens under them as serfs. Servants of the state, unworthy of holding high office (due to their lack of sophistication and lessor minds).
As in all socialist oligarchies, the elite strives to ensure that their worker caste is unable to rise above their meager station, otherwise they might become a threat to the elites. This is why after decades of Democratic control of our major cities, little is improved for the conditions of the common people:
The Democratic school system does not adequately educate the children, (and you will note has nearly wiped the history books of anything regarding the American revolutions). Citizenship, the traditional family, brotherhood and any teaching of personal morals or responsibility, has also been removed from the curriculum so as to teach each person that they stand alone. (Is it any wonder that city children naturally migrate to gangs to fill their need for fellowship?)
Their squalor has sometimes been “beautified” to please the eyes of the elite, but it remains squalor. They have ensured that employment remains low, which results in expensive entitlement programs and inevitably higher crime as the unemployed struggle for survival, which requires more government in the form of law enforcement (which can never defend the little people of Democratic metropolis, who have been disarmed to ensure that they are unable to protect themselves,) and more courts and prisons.
Meanwhile, in the rural areas of the states, UN blessed “sustainable growth” programs are being enacted to enable the government to take away at will the property of citizens (so that they can be handed over to crony capitalists moguls who back the politicians and promise higher tax revenues). This results in a the disappearance of the small family entrepreneur farms, and loss of rural employment forces them to the cities where they will hopefully become worker bees in the Democratically controlled metro-hives.
This is where Obama and the Democratic-socialist are leading America.