By now, everyone is more than familiar with Our Glorious President’s idiotic and infantile proclamation that "you didn’t build that", but something about that entire moronic speech resonated with some deep-seated memory that refused to get off its lazy ass and move into the spotlight of my consciousness.
Thankfully, Jennifer applied boot to ass:
“He didn’t invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?”
“Who?”
“Rearden. He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.”
She said, puzzled, “But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn’t anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?”
Sound familiar? It should. That came out of a book
She was probably the worst writer I have ever had the misfortune of reading, but damned if Rand was not right.
Y’know, I never noticed that.
Dangit! Every so often I fall into the pages of that book.
[...] Wish I’d thought of that. Obama’s speechwriters are cribbing from Ayn Rand! [...]
I am very thankful to Jennifer for fixing that itch at the back of my brain
.
Lord alone knows how he or anyone else on his staff would figure that no one would catch the similarities, though…
Well, when you’re used to using a book as an instruction manual, it’s sometimes hard to realize that others view the same book as a cautionary tale….
It’s like a scene from DS9 – same story, different moral to it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vtk-bX2v9k
Most of us read 1984 to be a cautionary tale, not an operations manual, too.
Heh! The Dem-Cong view “Atlas Shrugged” as an operators’ manual not a warning!
There is an aspect of the “You didn’t build that” that I have been having trouble finding a way to make it clear.
The emotional intent of the “idea” is to let the masses know that everyone is equal, and that it is natural and important to the cause that those who stick out be razed to “equality”.
“It takes a village”, right? “You didn’t build that” is the same meme.
It has been so important to expose and tear down heros for so long that most folks no longer understand what a hero or great person is.
It is true that the village collectively establishes the supporting infrastructure that those who rise above the rest take advantage of. What is not true is that “anybody” “could, if they wanted to” do the same. Few people have the intestinal fortitude and single-minded purpose to do a common thing exceptionally well. These people are anethema to a Liberal/Socialist Nirvana.
“You didn’t build that” is not a jab at the hardworking folk making a living so much as it is a battle cry inciting socialists to attack those who do not conform.
Soldier on.
I don’t think his speechwriters wrote that; I think it was from the heart.
@ Linoge:Glad to help
@Rob: Oh, yeah. He was off-teleprompter for that, no doubt.
@ AuricTech: I wonder how they plan on escaping the inevitable fail at the end…
@ Rolf: Well, when you start out with a broken toy – and Garek is definitely broken in a variety of fashions – you are never going to have a good playset.
@ MAJ Mike: Apparently.
@ eli: Oh, that is quite true. Those four little words were a multi-pronged attack against all kinds of different people for all kinds of different reasons, which is why I am at a complete loss as to why it has not significantly impacted his polling numbers.
@ Rob Crawford: Quite possible.
@ Jennifer:
@ John Hardin: Nah. Not enough “uh”, “um”, or stuttering.