Obama spoke those four words last week in the context of a wider statement that can only be spun, but not misunderstood.
Those now infamous words amounted to his explicit confession of the ethical principle at the core of Obama’s belief system: collectivism.
As good a definition of collectivism one can find is Ayn Rand’s: “Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group -- whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called ‘the common good’.”
OK, if “you didn’t build that,” someone else did -- and Obama told us who it was: other people, whether configured as “the government,” or “society.” Anyone other than you. The collective.
This means that if you didn’t build "that" and the collective did . . . well, you have no inalienable right to “that.”
According to the President of the United States -- the freest, most capitalist, private property protective nation ever to exist -- individuals create nothing by themselves, it’s the collective that’s responsible, and so that’s where ownership of the "that" properly should be vested.
What's the "that"?
Private property. Your private property.
Obama’s naked collectivist attack on individual enterprise -- "You didn't build 'that'" -- was, at bottom, an attack on the nature, source, and ownership of private property.
Someone, please explain that to Mitt Romney, as well as every Republican candidate running for election today.
