On July 13, 2012, at a campaign event at Roanoke Fire Station #1, in Roanoke, Virginia, President Barack Obama 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. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. 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 bolding is mine.
I agree with all of the non-bolded part.
It’s the bolded part that I disagree with.
Just imagine if someone had said:
“If Barack Obama has a Harvard law degree, he didn’t earn that. Somebody else made that happen.”
Or imagine if someone had said:
“If J.K. Rowling is cited as the author of the Harry Potter books, she didn’t write them. Somebody else made that happen.”
Or imagine if someone had said:
“If the Beatles are credited for writing and performing Rubber Soul, they didn’t do that. Someone else made that happen.”
Obama’s statement isn’t just incorrect – it’s evil. It’s evil, because he is saying that all the hard work that someone did to start a business was not really done by them – it was done by someone else. Working 60 or 80 hours a week – risking your life savings – eating peanut sandwiches in the beginning so you can pay your bills – Obama is saying that people didn’t actually do these things. It’s evil because Obama is denying the existence of individual effort and individual responsibility. He is denying the very existence of the individual. That’s not just false – it’s evil.
