Americans pride themselves on being self-reliant. In the eyes of many, there’s nothing better than a self-made man. (Somehow self-made women don’t have the same status). Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography is perhaps the archetypal American rags-to-riches story. Andrew Carnegie is the Gilded Age example. The myth is so entrenched that President Obama couldn’t express a simple truth without creating a faux or Fox controversy (but then I repeat myself) over the following words:
“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.”
BMGer JohnD raised the issue here, and Romney has been trying to capitalize on the controversy, but he’s having a hard time, factually speaking.
As ABC News’ Jake Tapper reported Monday, the star of a recent Romney ad hitting Obama over “you didn’t build that” had received millions in government loans and contracts. Romney stopped in Costa Mesa, California Monday to meet with a “roundtable” of small business leaders, held in front of a sign that says “We did build it!”
Naturally, it turned out that at least two of the companies represented—Endural LLC and Philatron Wire and Cable—had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in government contracts. When Romney visited the Boston’s historic black neighborhood of Roxbury last week, Romney touted an auto repair shop, declaring that “This is not the result of government…This is the result of people who take risks, who have dreams, who build for themselves and for their families.” Except it turned out that the auto repair shop guy started out without any funds and was only able to build his business because of a bond issed by the local government.
In addition to these clowns, we have a loony op-ed in the Wall Street Journal claiming that the internet was created by private enterprise. In fact, it was a government invention.
The rising star of movement conservatism has turned into a black hole of ideology where the light of reality is quickly extinguished. What we get these days are the fragments of every belief that has driven the Republican Party for the last 30 years–the racism, the nativism, the voter suppression–supported by “facts” that can’t survive more than a nanosecond. Whatever intellectual value movement conservatism had to offer, it is gone now. Rhetorically, the GOP is grasping at straws.
It’s hard to say if a more liberal point of view will fill the vacuum, but that’s what President Obama is banking on when he said, “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.” He’s channeling an idea that’s was articulated years ago by economist Jared Bernstein, Vice President Biden’s economic advisor: we’re all in this together. Acronymized as WITT, Bernstein identified it as the Democratic ideal, though not necessarily one that the Democratic Party has always lived up to. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education, all are part of the WITT philosophy. We share the burden, and we share the benefits.
The Republican Party, on the other hand, and at the moment, the Romney campaign, has doubled down on what Bernstein calls You’re On Your Own (YOYO) ideology:
One central goal of the YOYO movement is to continue and even accelerate the trend toward shifting economic risks from the government and the nation’s corporations onto individuals and their families. You can see this intention beneath the surface of almost every recent conservative initiative: Social Security privatization, personal accounts for health care (the so-called Health Savings Accounts), attacks on labor market regulations, and the perpetual crusade to slash the government’s revenue through regressive tax cuts—a strategy explicitly tagged as “starving the beast”—and block the government from playing a useful role in our economic lives.
The idea that small business owners make it on their own is YOYO mythology. It taps into the archetype of America as the land of opportunity where hard work is all you need to succeed. Personally, I think business success is commendable. But those who succeed at business do so through a combination of talent, luck, the business environment, and hard work. They don’t do it all by themselves. Every successful business person carries an invisible backpack of unseen, unmeasured benefits that enables success from governmental loans and transportation infrastructure to a stable society with a strong, productive economy (in spite of the current depression). Barack Obama may be the most conservative Democratic president of the 20th century, but his recent comments cast his campaign in a very traditional, liberal mold. That he’s even trying to do so suggests that the tide in America is turning.
Discuss
43 Comments . Leave a comment below.Mark ruins his article by claiming Republicans are racist, nativist, and want voter suppression.
Did the small businesses Romney visited receive their SBA or state backed loan in a nefarious way. We all have read the stench that came from Solyndra and how big donors of Obama receive millions of dollars in loan guarantees.
Now I could be wrong, but I am willing to bet the businesses Mitt defended went through the proper channels and filled out the proper paperwork, and put their credit and own cash on the line. So to Mark, yes, they did build their business, just like everyone else who has the same opportunity to lay it out on the line.
As we careen into a second dip, I hope these business owners who have taxpayer backed loans, do not join Occupy Wall Street, and ask for their loans to be forgiven, like the thousands who want their student loans to be wiped out. The nerve of those kids, right?
Speaking of businesses, you folks aware of Obama’s Enemy List? This is bad for anyone who believes in free speech, unless you on BMG favor bully tactics and believe in vilifying lawful individuals who wish to participate in the democratic process.
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/04/20/president-obamas-enemies-list/
“Republicans are racist, nativist, and want voter suppression.”
hat/tip to Scott Brown, the King of out-of-context quotes.
Heritage is so pathetic. After hilariously claiming that Obama’s “enemies list” is worse than Nixon’s, they have this:
Unbelievable. So, in other words, exactly the features that made Nixon’s list so nefarious – it was (a) secret, and (b) involved manipulating federal machinery against those on it – are lacking in Obama’s, and yet Obama’s is somehow worse?
What a bunch of sniveling cowards these people are.
put on an enema list, but the procedure would have to be self-administered.
Unlike Nixon’s list, Obama’s has conservatives on it. That’s why it’s worse!
racist, etc. I didn’t mean it either. What I said was “every belief that has driven the Republican Party for the last 30 years.” Hint: those blue things with the lines under them are called links. They lead to stories that were in the news the day I wrote it. In another post, I could talk about the racism or you could read about it in this post I wrote.
And thank you for confirming that the businesses that Romney defended did indeed benefit from the government. See most of us here on Blue Mass Group believe that no one does it along.
Patrick, D. A Reason to Believe: Lessons from an Improbable Life.
(( His Excellency will be on WTKK-FM with Comrade Braude this morning at 0900. ))
Happy days.
Here
It’s a great commercial. Very heartwarming.
I just wonder where “responsibility” fits into the fifty million dollar per year executive compensation package for a mutual insurance company.
I really did like the commercial. I like to believe that such vignettes exemplify how real people help each other out over and over in tiny ways that make society more liveable. I think Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren invoke that energy in their reminders that none of us succeed alone.
I find it creepy that Liberty Mutual attempts to use that energy to obscure its obscenely excessive executive compensation packages.
You may not believe it but I live my life in much of the same way that commercial explains the give/take of our society. I’m a giver and I assume I will get it back somewhere, somehow from someone. I wish others could do this too but I see far too many people who only want to “take” and don’t give anything. It may be a small thing and it may not correlate to this feeling but I note seriously how celebrities and other wealthy people give to charity and I especially note how many give just enough to maximize their deductions vs. giving far more than they “should’.
to his statement to say “…you didn’t build it by yourselves,” it would have made it much more difficult for the Republicans to use those words against him.
That said, we shouldn’t overlook the fact that Democrats as well as Republicans have bought into the YOYO ideology in recent years. Bill Clinton and Al Gore made smaller government, privatization, and free, unregulated markets a cornerstone of their administration. The Republicans have taken that ideology to new levels, but both parties have done little to challenge the control of their corporate contributors.
“I was raised to believe that there are no limits to individual achievement and no excuses to justify indifference. From an early age, I was taught that success is measured not in material accumulations, but in service to others. I was encouraged to join causes larger than myself, to pursue positive change through a sense of mission, and to stand up for what I believe.”
Sure, pile on more insults and disrespect for people who take on responsibility and build a business. Of course they took out loans that’s pretty standard, very few businesses just grow from nothing but hard work. That doesn’t make them clowns, they weren’t claiming to have built it with no loans. It makes them ordinary responsible risk taking brave people, business owners who deserve respect.
And I don’t think the mythology is correct. America isn’t a land where all you need is hard work to succeed, that’s a socialist country mindset. America has always been a capitalist country where people needed capital to combine with hard work to succeed.
The government basically destroyed private business lending by floating the dollar, making it much more difficult for banks to anticipate that the dollars they received would be worth the same as the dollars they lent out.
This is why we would not have fixed-rate mortgages without a government guarantee somewhere along the line.
So they take a whack at the economy, put together a band-aid fix and then demand to be thanked and paid off in needless taxes for this Rube Goldberg system they have put together.
action and then deny it. I respect anyone who truly builds anything–business owner or not. I lose respect when they claim they did it alone.
Socialism? I don’t think it really thinks much about success. Hard work brings enough, not success.
In terms of mythology, however, Franklin’s Autobiography and Horatio Alger’s stories are archetypically American. Once upon a time, it might have easier to start out penniless, but today, the best way to do it is start with money.
those people who succeed on capital alone…
Moyer did a much better job than I could in taking down Crovitz, but I will add that Crovitz displays a stunning lack of knowledge of the technology (confusing Ethernet and “The Internet”) and also the process of how the protocols were created. Perhaps before writing anything like this again, he should attend a meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force. This is the group that standardizes the protocols that run on the Internet. When I was involved, it was a lesson on what could get done when businesses, academia, and the government all cooperate.
The IETF method of getting something to a “standard” state would probably make a right-winger’s head pop off. I have a t-shirt with a quote from Internet veteran Dave Clark that sums it up:
Obama had been saying that he was for business, just the kind he likes such as green energy.
Now he is going to develop a different kind of capitalism where innovation and invention comes about not for personal gain but to pay lots of taxes for society. I boldly predict that this argument goes nowhere.
I think ALL of us agree that “no man is an island”. I don’t believe my brethren here or elsewhere would try to debate how a business could be successful “without customers” so obviously businesses cannot be successful in a vacuum no matter how good the product/service. I think we were all trying to say there is a certain amount of things which are “given” in any statement. If you read my diary on this you’ll note I acknowledged some level of foundation which businesses start on which they had nothing to do with…
So if I go to a community event tomorrow and donate water to the volunteers and they thank me, should I would expect President Obama to say… “Don’t thank John, thank his company for paying him a salary so he could buy the water he donated, thank his car company where he bought the car to drive the water here…” In my mind and many other people’s minds, these things are “given” and focusing on those givens takes away the acknowledgment of the successes of the individuals.
If you want to start focusing on the “assumed foundations” then I would expect people who use SNAP services to emphatically THANK those of us who pay for those SNAP dollars, people using public education should THANK those of us who pay taxes, people who go to the hospital or the Doctors should THANK those of us who pay taxes, citizens (who pay no Fed Income taxes) protected by our military should THANK ME for paying for their protection… Personally I don’t expect those appreciative thanks because those services are “givens”. Obama pandered to the crowd as he often does.
Yes, it is.
I’m enjoying a post by kirth.
funny
for a soundbite, I’m sure he’d choose his words so they couldn’t be cherry picked. but that’s the campaign business. I agree with what he means.
I think we agree on giving credit where it’s due. I think we’re arguing about how much credit should be given where. We’re arguing in a context in which many Republicans are saying that government is either detrimental or unnecessary. I guess I think we need to unpack those “givens.”
with Thurston and Lovey
While YOYO is obviously based on an illusion, it is probably a useful illusion. It amplifies your successes, makes you feel prouder of them. It encourages you to act for yourself, not to wait for help, not to complain about conditions.
That may make it harder to get people to see its falsity. We cling to useful illusions.
It is not an ideology. It is not an attempt to make sense of the world. It’s a market segment. It buys certain preferences, preferences, and symbols. To expect coherence is to expect too much of it.
Liberalism may be an ideology. It may strive to make sense of the world. It’s tragedy is that it is barely a market segment. Even people who agree with us don’t want to be identified with us.
Your intentions are worthy but the results look terrible and people run (success has many fathers while failure is an orphan…). Conservatives are trying to keep the status quo and that often times is a very safe thing to do.
When you think about it, people sometimes come up with great ideas which are very rationale and appear to be the right thing to do, and yet the support can sometimes be tepid because it’s “different” (maybe you would say progressive).
I was just trying to rationalize why people don’t want to be identified with the liberal movement sometimes.
It’s like a murderer who is up for parole. Liberals might be more inclined to give this person a chance, let him out, let him try to become a productive member of society again. Conservatives are more likely to say “let him rot in prison forever”. You are willing to take a chance while we are not. Our risk is maybe punishing someone too much while your risk is a Woburn cop being shot by someone who should never have gotten out of prison. So your ideology can be more risky to be associated with.
Just a thought, no backup resources to support this thought.
and its all about who you associate with
Democrats these days are trying to implement stuff that works in Europe or in the past. The Ayn Rand style economic policy that our rather radical Republicans are out after only seems to work in novels.
No successful capitalist country has ever attempted the tiny level of public investment or the thin safety net of Rep Ryan and his followers. Not a one.
By the way “taking chances on blowing things up” might better describe the gun lobby, the eagerness to invade Iran, and the climate denialism that characterizes the GOP. The “conservative” thing to do apparently involves flooding Florida.
are you referring to the UK/Greek austerity programs?
When you say “tiny level” or “thin safety net” are you referring to the $3.8 trillion budget… or our budget being such a high percentage of our GDP (2009 – 25.2, 2010 – 24.1, 2011 – 24.1 and 2012 – 24.3). Sounds like our spending, even if we cut it along the lines of Ryan or Obama’s bipartisan debt commission, would still not be considered “tiny”.
Gun lobby seems like they are the same now as they have ever been. Invading Iran, invading Grenada, invading occupied France, invading Mexico… Climate denialism, my comments are not as much about “are we polluting the air…” but are more about “will the changes being proposed actually do anything to help”. If we switch to Chevy Volts for 100% of our car usage, will that stop or reverse global warming (or Climate change)? What air/pollution issues were around during the last Ice Age? I don’t deny the ocean level is rising (I can’t if it is a fact), but what I would like to know if can any of the suggestions about CO2 controls in the US make a difference?
Thoughts…
That’s a rather daunting collection of straw men. We just need some baskets and jelly beans.
The austerity stuff is actually being pushed by the GOP not the Democrats, and many of us Democrats do indeed point to Europe and point out that it is really, really not working in the UK. And austerity is manifestly not “ending doubts” and making the Confidence Fairy come and sprinkle prosperity dust far and wide. But belief in austerity and the Confidence Fairy is Republican dogma these days. Talk about wanting to blow things up!
*
Our situation, of course, is nothing like Greece’s. US debt is very cheap now. We have our own currency. Unless the GOP continues to starve the IRS, we still have a working tax system. And unless the GOP plays chicken again with the debt ceiling, we should continue to do fine, but Republican House freshmen are very willing to blow up investor confidence in the US because, because, well, I don’t know why. If you recall, Santorum got a lot of grief for voting to raise the debt ceiling. Why be sane when you can blow things up?
I know the Greece situation is different, very different. You can’t point to any country over there and draw any accurate analogy. I’m not the person who said “Democrats these days are trying to implement stuff that works in Europe”. I have often said we can’t cherry pick something that works in Finland and try to implement it here and expect the same results.
I do like austerity, but in a different mode than you or other GOP supporters think of it. My idea of it is to cut severely but reuse that money in truly productive economy generating ways (like infrastructure).
isn’t austerity at all. It’s a form of good government.
Or maybe you want to exchange some social safety net for some infrastructure?
And increase spending on infrastructure as well, but not s much. Social nets need some trimming and waste reduction. Supporters of social net programs should be first in line to eliminate waste since that will also increase support for such programs.
do you have any?
There have been some developments since your Nova article was written in 1997. You might do better to think about those. Maybe even find out what most actual experts on the subject are saying.
I did read your pointer and I read a similar news article the other day. I specifically said I was not denying the earth is warming… what I asked was what will be the effects of changing things (like our CO2 output)?
Lots of typos.
preference->prejudices
It’->Its
conservatism is less an ideology than an attitude. What we’re seeing in the fragmentation of the GOP is that there is no end game.
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for keeping her in Cadillacs.
Golda Meir, Israeli Prime Minister, 1977
“I never did anything alone. Whatever was accomplished in this country was accomplished collectively.”
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