Americans have always been a people who will pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get the job done. From the expansion of the West; to the development of the automobile; to the launch of a computer company in the family garage; Americans have relied on themselves to build an exceptional nation. That is why when President Obama says, “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,” he is waging war on the American Dream.
Eric Allie / PoliticalCartoons.com (click to view more cartoons by Allie)
President Obama’s attacks on business fit his campaign’s narrative of Big Government and class warfare. President Obama’s words are intended to foster a sense of envy and resentment of the business class. He paints a picture of success in America as being merely the product of luck and government assistance won at the expense of poor, hardworking Americans. In this view, success is unearned, undeserved, and unfair.
President Ronald Reagan warned of such cynicism in 1982:
“Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes—one rich, one poor—both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other? Since when do we in America accept this alien and discredited theory of social and class warfare? Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?”
To answer President Reagan’s questions, since President Obama was elected. President Obama is crushing the American dream and destroying that which America was founded on and has made us the greatest country on earth. It is freedom FROM government regulation that has allowed American ingenuity and entrepreneurship to flourish. It is the concepts of rugged individualism and personal accomplishment that inspires exploration and innovation.
Small businesses, the economic engines that fuel the American economy, are the ultimate examples of the fulfillment of the American Dream, but President Obama dismisses the work it takes to build them. The National Federation of Independent Business hit back at the President saying, “[President Obama’s] unfortunate remarks over the weekend show an utter lack of understanding and appreciation for the people who take a huge personal risk and work endless hours to start a business and create jobs.”
President Obama thinks the business community is the enemy and the government is the solution to all of our problems. Well, with Obama’s liberal policies in place, unemployment is holding steady at over eight percent for the last 41 months, and consumer spending is down three months in a row. Almost 88 million Americans are out of the workforce and one in seven are on food stamps. What are President Obama’s solutions? Extending unemployment benefits and gutting welfare reform to remove the work requirement. These failed policies only prolong joblessness and promote a culture of government dependence.
America is an exceptional nation because of its people not because of bureaucrats in Washington. President Obama’s liberal philosophy prevents him from understanding the American Dream because he thinks that Big Government must be in every American’s life like Obamacare. By waging war on business and individualism, he is waging war on the American Dream.
