There has been a big buzz around Obama's words at a July 17, 2012 speech in front of a Roanoke, Virginia Fire Station. Of particular interest to Obama’s critics was a specific section of the speech (~33:30):
"There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there.
It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. "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. 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.”(emphasis mine)
As predicted, the Romney campaign took the highlighted section out of context for a campaign commercial:
"President Obama recently said: ‘If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.’
"Clearly, this President doesn't understand how our economy works.”Obviously the Romney campaign took this line out of context. Watching the video, it is fairly clear Obama was talking about “roads and bridges” when he said “you didn’t build that.” Obama confirmed this in a video response to Romney:
Taking quotes out of context is nothing new. In fact, Obama has been guilty of this himself. As predicted, Romney’s distortions, as well as the distortions from American Crossroads, were debunked by Politifact, FactCheck, and the Washington Post Fact Checker. However, Romney has continued to take it of context. In addition, Romney recently took another quote out of context (Seems quite hypocritical for someone who just recently demanded an apology from Barrack Obama over Obama’s own distortions of Romney).
However, the goal of this post is not to once again debunk this criticism. This post is meant to respond to the criticism of those who have actually taken the quote in context, yet still got the message wrong. Charles Krauthammer makes one of these mistakes in his column
"And who might that somebody else be? Government, says Obama. It built the roads you drive on. It provided the teacher who inspired you. It “created the Internet.” It represents the embodiment of “we’re in this together” social solidarity that, in Obama’s view, is the essential origin of individual and national achievement.
To say that all individuals are embedded in and the product of society is banal. Obama rises above banality by means of fallacy: equating society with government, the collectivity with the state. Of course we are shaped by our milieu. But the most formative, most important influence on the individual is not government. It is civil society, those elements of the collectivity that lie outside government: family, neighborhood, church, Rotary club, PTA, the voluntary associations that Tocqueville understood to be the genius of America and source of its energy and freedom."Someone could make this argument. Obama didn’t exactly mention the elements of society that exist outside government. So this is a fair criticism, but later he makes a few pretty glaring mistakes:
"Obama’s infrastructure argument is easily refuted by what is essentially a controlled social experiment. Roads and schools are the constant. What’s variable is the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual. It is therefore precisely those individual characteristics, not the communal utilities, that account for the different outcomes.”Now the first thing that should be easily refuted is the idea that schools are the constant, or that the only variables are “the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual.” It is no secret that schools are far from equal. We all get different teachers. We all get different classmates. We all get different levels of funding. We all get different school philosophies. As Krauthammer pointed out earlier, other elements of social society are variables as well. Most important of these is that not everyone has the same kind of family. In fact, the income level of your family largely determines your own income level, meaning that this may be more than just another variable, it may be one of the most heavily weighted variables in the equation.
If Krauthammer's point is that, if we were to make all those factors constant, including factors such as family and culture (Romney's Favorite), we would still have different outcomes, then yes he has a point. There are people who are smarter and more hard working than others and they would rise above everyone else. But Obama didn't ignore this point. Politifact puts it very well:
"Romney cherry-picked a quote that made it sound like Obama was dismissive of businesses when in fact he was making a point that success comes from the combination of "individual initiative" and the fact that "we do things together."" (emphasis mine)If the "we do things together" part is constant among all people, then the "individual initiative" part becomes the only factor. The problem is that the "we do things together" part is not constant. And that fact underlies Obama's point. A bit more on this later.
Most of the rest of Krauthammer’s article deals with how liberals and conservatives differ in regards to policy recommendations. However, this has little to do with this article. My purpose in this article is to get the facts straight over what Obama said and what liberals generally mean when talking about this subject. I do not aim to criticize or endorse any solution to the reality observed here. I may do that in a later post. Then again, I may not. Anyway, where Krauthammer most got the message wrong is in the following:
“Obama compounds the fallacy by declaring the state to be the font of entrepreneurial success. How so? It created the infrastructure — roads, bridges, schools, Internet — off which we all thrive.
Absurd. We don’t credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of Relativity because it transmitted Einstein’s manuscript to the Annalen der Physik. Everyone drives the roads, goes to school, uses the mails. So did Steve Jobs. Yet only he created the Mac and the iPad.”In order to understand Krauthammer’s fallacy here, we need to understand the strongest and most honest interpretation of Obama’s speech, as well as the message coming from the left about this subject. This argument is that the “the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual” is not alone responsible for success. There are other necessary factors, specifically collective society. These can include mundane factors such as roads, to significant factors such as education and family income. There is no such thing as a fully “self-made man.” Everyone owes their success to individual initiative AND outside opportunity. This argument has been famously articulated and defended in Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book, Outliers. Gladwell goes even further to suggest there are many seemingly insignificant factors that contribute to success in certain fields. However, the central point is clear, although the “the energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius of the individual” is certainly necessary for success, it is not sufficient. There are many causes to success. You can argue over just how significant each cause is, but these causes exist nonetheless.
Essentially, Krauthammer is committing a fallacy by failing to distinguish between necessary and sufficient causes. Obama is saying that the government plays a necessary role in the success of entrepreneurs (and in Krauthammer's analogy, so does the post office). As Krauthammer eluded to earlier, civil society also plays a necessary role. Yet, this is not a sufficient role. As Obama points out, there are plenty of smart, hard-working Americans who are not always successful. I doubt Krauthammer would be so naive as to pretend this is not true.
Another critic, made a similar fallacy when he wrote his own criticism of Obama’s speech:
“Obama combines two ideas: the familiar and broadly acceptable idea in Elzabeth Warren's speech—and a second, much more destabilizing idea.
Obama's second idea is that success is to a great extent random, a matter of luck. You think you succeeded because you were smart or hard-working? Listen—a lot of smart and hard-working people don't succeed.
...
President Obama's stray sentences however point to a bolder conclusion. If it's not brains or work that account for success, what is it? The answer must be … luck. Not maybe entirely luck, but luck to a great degree. By definition, however, luck is amoral. Nobody can deserve luck, otherwise he wouldn't be lucky. To the extent success is due to luck, success is undeserved—and to the exten[t] that success is undeserved, the successful have no very strong claim to the proceeds of their success. Whereas Warren suggests that the wealthy should be taxed to repay tangible benefits they have personally received, Obama is indicating a possibility that the wealthy should be taxed … because their wealth is to a great extent an accident of fate.” (emphasis mine)Frum's logic sounds similar to the creationist claim that the theory of evolution relies purely on chance. Although chance does play a necessary role in the theory of evolution , non-random mechanisms like natural selection also play a necessary role as well, since chance alone cannot create the complex life we see today. Similarly, although luck and opportunity do play a necessary role in success, non-random mechanisms like individual initiative also play a necessary role as well, since chance alone cannot result in individual success1. As a result, it would be trivial to think that just because luck is necessary for success that we should also ignore what else is necessary for success. After all, the successful person did put in the "energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius" to form the business.
As Frum points out, all Obama uses this argument for is to push for a return to the Clinton tax rates. But it is not entirely clear what policy proposals necessarily follow from the fact that success is due to both luck and individual initiative. The main purpose in pointing this out is to help influence political thought. The poor aren't necessarily lazy, incompetent, and/or stupid and the rich aren't necessarily smartest and/or hardest working among us. But the rich are likely smarter and/or harder working than the majority of us. So does that mean they deserve everything they have? Nothing they have? Most of what they have? Or is it even for anyone else to decide but themselves? The answer does not necessarily follow.
And I am not sure why this is so controversial. After all, nobody complains when a quarterback or an Olympic gold medalist thanks everyone who helped them get where they are today. To accept an academy award and not pay tribute to others is considered rude. How is business any different?
So for those of us who have put forward the "energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work and genius" to get where we are in life, how should we think of our success? New York Times columnist David Brooks has an answer. And it may be my favorite so far.
"Great companies, charities and nations were built by groups of individuals who each vastly overestimated their own autonomy. As an ambitious executive, it’s important that you believe that you will deserve credit for everything you achieve. As a human being, it’s important for you to know that’s nonsense."
1 Although one can argue that, since individual nature is is a product of biology and experiences, which are almost entirely not under an individual's control, individual initiative must be based on chance as well. But that is a separate argument from the one being made here.
The Roundup:
The Roundup: On Ryan EditionRecommended reading on Romney's new VP pick.
Romney's "You Didn't Build That" Fails
"If Romney was trying to prove that businesses only succeed on the backs of Galtian ubermensches with no external help, he's mostly proved the opposite point. But fortunately for the Romney campaign, this particular attack benefits from a widespread American cultural delusion that success has nothing to do with structural advantages and everything to do with individual excellence, or that you can't be proud of your accomplishments if you acknowledge the collaborative efforts of others on your behalf."(emphasis mine)
A Year Later, S&P Downgrade of US Looks Like a Dud
"A year later, S&P’s historic move looks like a non-event. Long-term interest rates are sharply lower, the Dow industrials reversed course and is now up more than 1,600 points. The dollar has rallied, and gold prices are down from where they were when S&P lowered the boom."Touchdown: NASA rover Curiosity lands on Mars
"The nuclear-powered Curiosity, the size of a small car, is packed with scientific tools, cameras and a weather station. It sports a robotic arm with a power drill, a laser that can zap distant rocks, a chemistry lab to sniff for the chemical building blocks of life and a detector to measure dangerous radiation on the surface."Obama’s ‘Sealed’ Records
"Q: Are Obama’s early records “sealed”? A: No. Many records that presidential candidates don’t ordinarily release do remain confidential, but they are not “sealed” by a court. The 16 claims in a widely distributed graphic are mostly false or distorted." ... "In some cases, the records this screed claims are “sealed” are actually public, and open for anyone to see. Other supposedly “sealed” records are normally private documents that Obama hasn’t released — and that other presidential candidates haven’t released either. So as with earlier versions, this is little more than an attempt to raise suspicions by asking for records that aren’t ordinarily made public, without any evidence that those records contain anything derogatory. "The Wall Street Journal: Dismissing Environmental Threats Since 1976
"To forestall policy on climate change, the Wall Street Journal editorial board routinely downplays scientific consensus, overstates the cost of taking action, and claims that politics, not science, motivate those concerned about the climat e. But an analysis of more than 100 editorials from 1976 to present shows that the Wall Street Journal used these same rhetorical tactics in previous decades on acid rain and ozone depletion and they did not stand the test of time."WP Fact Checker: Obama knocked for not visiting Israel
"Pollak is correct that the Emergency Committee ad does not directly say that Obama’s travel record was unusual for a president, but it certainly suggests that. While there may have been good political reasons for Obama to make a trip to Je rusalem, the basic frame of the ad is misleading, especially the claim that he’s traveled all through the Middle East at the expense of a visit to Israel.
The Romney ad also misleadingly suggests Obama’s failure to visit Israel is unusual since it asks, “Who shares your values?”
Obama may have failed the Woody Allen test, but his travel record to Israel is par for the course for American presidents."Obama's wartime presidency
PolitiFact.com consultes analysts from Brookings, Heritage, CFR, and their own records on Obama's handling of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Despite Polls, Romney Camp Sees Opportunity in Pa.
"But what many Republicans expect to be their strongest card in Pennsylvania is one that they are often reluctant to tout: a new voter identification law that requires a specific form of ID in order to cast a ballot."No, Republican's aren 't keeping the real intent of voter ID laws a secret
"At a June GOP rally, House Majority Leader Mike Turzai sparked outrage among voting-rights proponents when he trumpeted the new law as an accomplishment that would pay political dividends to the Republican nominee."
14 Wacky "Facts" Kids Will Learn in Louisiana's Voucher Schools
"Many of these schools, Kopplin notes, rely on Pensecola-based A Beka Book curriculum or Bob Jones University Press textbooks to teach their pupils Bible-based "facts," such as the existence of Nessie the Loch Ness Monster and all sorts of pseudoscience that researcher Rachel Tabachnick and writer Thomas Vinciguerra have thankfully pored over so the rest of world doesn't have to." (emphasis mine)
Hypocrisy at work:
"Romney, while serving as Massachusetts governor, had once petitioned the White House to loosen employment rules for those on welfare
....
The Obama administration recently announced plans to issue waivers to states that wanted "to test alternative and innovative strategies, policies and procedures" to improve employment among needy families. It said it was acting after receiving requests from some of the nation's governors, including Republicans in Utah and Nevada. But senior GOP lawmakers attacked the move as an attempt to undermine the welfare-to-work requirements in effect for more than a decade." (emphasis mine)I guess sometimes the GOP sometimes wants big government to tell the states what to do (welfare in this case.
Former Congressional staffer on how money divides politics
"Hobson: Well of course, the Republicans only had that debt ceiling fight, they said, because they were worried about the nation's huge debt and deficits.
Lofgren: Superficially that's true, but from what I saw in the House and Senate budget committees, it's a kind of phony claim, because they always subordinate deficit reduction to giving tax breaks to their wealthy contributors. So I think the deficit hawk claim is fraudulent -- it's simply bait to get concerned Americans to vote for them."WP Fact Checker: President Obama’s claim that insurance premiums ‘will go down’
"The president asserted that because of the law, small business and individual premiums “will go down.” But the reality is much more complicated than that.
The law’s provisions, especially the requirement for essential benefits, will almost certainly increase premiums, though tax subsidies will help mitigate the impact for a little over half of the people in the exchanges. But a lot of other people — such as a young male who currently has a plan that does not include all of the required benefits — are likely going to have sticker shock when they see what happens to their premiums starting in 2014.
As we said, you don’t get something for nothing. And the president should be more careful about suggesting that is the case, especially when discussing a complex law with still-uncertain ramifications."
NOM Thinks This Black Preacher Will Convince You to Oppose Gay Marriage
"The men who helped awaken the conscience of a nation expressed disappointment at the idea that Owens' experience of segregation could lead to a career of anti-gay rights advocacy and a role with an organization that is trying to use the me mory of the civil rights struggle itself to sow division between African-Americans and gay rights supporters. "William Owens is operating outside of the transparency and the openness of Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks," Lawson says. "If he was in Nashville during part of the time I was there, he was not paying attention to my teachings. My teachings were not about practicing social or cultural discrimination against anybody.""
The Evangelical Christian Right is starting to see David Barton for what he is, an ideologically motivated sociopath! They are joining mainstream historians of all political stripes to denounce this man's reality-challenged assertions about American History.
Doctors target gun violence as a social disease
"They want a science-based, pragmatic approach based on the reality that we live in a society saturated with guns and need better ways of preventing harm from them."
Romney’s ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Attack Ad Stars Businessman Who Received Millions in Government Money
Even Romney inadvertently admits other factors are involved in prosperity.
Can Obama Overcome Job Numbers -- and History?
Is Social Security still a good deal for workers?
Republican Mike Lofgren joins the right's ever going protest of the TEA party
David Frum shows how Universal Healthcare reform can actually be conservative and how Ann Coulter has been a hypocrite about it.
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