You Didn’t Build That
President Obama’s recent comments have inspired a new website, ”You Didn’t Build That.” Here are a few of my favorite entries. What are yours?
The Uncompromised Case for Capitalism
President Obama’s recent comments have inspired a new website, ”You Didn’t Build That.” Here are a few of my favorite entries. What are yours?
16 Comments to “You Didn’t Build That”
Bob the Builder:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4118195789589&set=a.1271145175103.2042620.1124089073&type=1&theater
Build-a-Bear:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=671301724288&set=a.526950390518.2042019.48700736&type=1&theater
Those are great! The Henry Ford ones are good too.
I like the Jefferson Starship one.
I don’t think Obama meant to say that the businessman didn’t build his business, but rather that he didn’t build the infrastructure (although the taxes the businessman paid did). Let’s have fun with it anyway.
I disagree. The grammar doesn’t make sense. Either way, it’s consistent with his overall point: “There is no such thing as an individual achievement, so stop feeling so good about yourself.” It really is a vicious attack on success and self-esteem.
That’s the spin Carney will try to put on it.
Don is quite right. The literal meaning of Obama’s statement was if you have a business, you didn’t build it. However, he was speaking not writing. He didn’t appear to be following a script. He was letting the crowd interrupt him. Under those circumstances it is very easy to make a grammatical error. I don’t think he is stupid enough to deliberately tell businessmen that they didn’t build their businesses.
He made a mistake and I hope it costs him the election. Regardless of the error, his message was offensive enough. He is building a case for victimizing businessmen for their debt to society.
Wasn’t that teacher paid. Didn’t his taxes build that infrastructure?
And of course infrastructure could exist without the coersive power of the government.
Is it not a concern when the verbal inaccuracy (i’m being generous) of the president causes citizens to need to speculate and decipher “what he really must have meant”??
The result of having to do so allows any politician to say anything, with knowledge that they can backpeddle in the future if he is targeted for his remarks.
We should hold individuals accountable for the precise language they use and form our decisions about them based on that and their policies, and actions. What else do we have to go on? Whim? Intuition?
If one is responsible enough to rule the greatest country on earth, one ought to be able to communicate with precision.
Obama’s real meaning stripped bare: “The individual owes the collective, especially the really productive ones. Now let’s make them pay up, and let me (who couldn’t produce a damned thing) be the one in charge of exacting the tribute and divvying up the goods!”
Finally everyone can see who Obama really is - a marxist thru and thru. The amazing thing is that he is so brazen about it, he must have really thought no one would object.
I think I am going to nominate the entire site for a Nobel Prize.
I like the sandcastle one.
I got in on the fun here with Rachmaninoff. Not sure if the link will work, but here goes:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151924464260237&set=a.10151756081305237.851763.800710236&type=1&theater
I don’t know how many people making comments have ever founded and built any business. I have. I built three of them — all successful and all of which grew to be far too large for my original intentions. I need to tell you that at no time during the climb from start-up to blazing success and acclaim. . . .at no time along that route . . . . . .did it ever occur to me to think that “I built that”. I had mentors and friends, and fantastically knowledgeable and helpful employees and though I was a Republican . . . ..who kept saying I wanted the government to just back off and let me run my business. . . ..I had failed to notice how much we were benefitting from the government programs that brought educated employees (the military educated most of my managers who’d learned management as they were promoted. . . ..does say something that the ones I chose were ‘special ops’ types. . . ..they were more entrepreneurial than the regular forces. But we also benefitted from findings of the scientists at govt funded universities who had researched so many things we found incredibly useful. I went over to UCLA and tried out DARPA net (aka the Internet to us today.)
This was not a grammatical error other than the parsing and misquoting (deliberate) of Fox News etc. His whole set of remarks clearly pointed out that no-one does it alone. Some people at the top of Capitalistic companies today. . . ..you know, the ones who pay themselves $40 mil in salary and then ‘only’ take a small bonus of another 30 million. . . ..they think they built that. They are wrong.
The Republican party of today is far different than the one 30 years ago. . . .there was a Bertrand Russell quote I remember from childhood. A reporter asked him what he thought of his 20 year old son being a socialist. Russell replied: “If at 20 he was not, I’d think he had no heart; if at 40 he still is then I’ll think he has no brain.” However, even Russell didn’t foresee the coldly, calculating hard heartedness of today’s Tea Party Republicans.
I don’t understand what is hard hearted about rejecting slavery. I frankly don’t believe anything by anon posters anyway.