Collectivist President Devalues Achievement: “If You’ve Got a Business — You Didn’t Build That”

Photo credit, Don Peterson, AP

At a campaign stop in Roanoke, Virginia, Obama took the opportunity to devalue achievement and hard work, by literally telling business owners that they didn’t “build that.” Successful Americans didn’t get where they are without “somebody else making it happen.”

Video via Gateway Pundit:

The mask slips a little bit more, every day, doesn’t it?

“If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own,” he said. “You didn’t get there on your own.”

“The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together,” he said. “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.”

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help,” he said. “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.”

Deep breath.

Okay, obviously, people work together to make things happen. Obviously, many things are interconnected. And any honest businessman will give credit where credit is due in helping his business get off the ground. But  the Collectivist in Chief  goes overboard. He wants us to believe  that they didn’t get where they are without the government’s help, when more often than not, the government is a hindrance to small business.

For a United States President to go out there and tell business owners, “you didn’t build that” is the height of arrogance.  Could there ever be a clearer signal that he’s sworn off the white middle class male vote?

Earlier this year, it was suggested that part of Obama’s campaign strategy would be to isolate and attack “privileged” straight white males, as personified by Mitt Romney.

In a wide-ranging symposium Monday called “The State of Race in America,” award-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas said that “in some ways, the soul of the heterosexual white man is a stake” in the 2012 election.

His comments were part of a larger monologue on political and social power moving to minority groups, which he said will hurt former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign.

“For everybody in this country in which America’s always been a fight,” he said, “They’re looking at him [Mitt Romney], in which everything’s been given, and we’re going, ‘OK, do you see yourself? Do you fully and comprehensively see yourself and how you fit in this?’”