President Obama’s Bastille Day Speech and the Olympics — by Polydamas
On July 14, 2012, on the 223rd anniversary of Bastille Day, the start of the French Revolution, American President Barack Obama gave a very insightful speech (http://bit.ly/SsI24B ) to his supporters in Roanoke, Virginia, and proclaimed the following:
“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.
“The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.”
To address the unstated philosophical, ideological, and political premises implicit in President Obama’s speech, let us briefly detour to a very current analogy, the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Would anyone denigrate the accomplishments of an Olympic gold medal-winning athlete by making the following arguments:
— The athlete did not win the medal on his or her own.
— The athlete did not win because he or she trained so much harder and smarter than the competition. There are a lot of smart and hard-working athletes out there.
— If the athlete was successful, somebody along the line gave him or her some help.
— Somebody else helped create the sports training system that allowed the athlete to succeed.
— There was a great teacher or coach somewhere in the athlete’s life.
— Somebody invested in roads and bridges to take the athlete to and from sports practice.
— If the athlete competed in a sport, the athlete did not create the sport.
— The sport did not get invented on its own.
— Government research created and funded the sport so athletes could enjoy and train in the sport.
— When all athletes succeed, it is because of some individual initiative, but also because athletes do things together.
— If every athlete had his or her own sports equipment or trained at different sporting facilities, that would be a hard way to organize sports competition.
In one word, no.
Now, it is true that every Olympic sport was originally invented by some other human being at an earlier point in history. It is true that every athlete has had a coach or a teacher to teach the sport and to train. It is true that one’s accomplishments in sports are built upon the previous accomplishments of one’s predecessors. So far, so good. On the medal stand, a medal-winning athlete can certainly thank the deity of his or her choice, parents, family, teachers, coaches, previous generations of athletes, and other individuals who have made a positive impact on his or her life. However, there is a crucial distinction here that must be made.
President Obama’s words must be read carefully and placed in context to discern their true meaning. He is not asking people to be grateful to their parents, family, teachers, co-workers, and all other individuals who had a hand in one’s individual success. He is demanding gratitude and service to the government. He believes that your individual accomplishments are not your own, but belong to the government. If you are an athlete who just won the gold medal, you owe your gold medal to the government for building the roads and bridges that allowed your parents to drive you to your sports practice. Of course, his analysis ignores the fact that you had no choice except to use government roads and bridges to get to your sports practice. Moreover, his argument ignores individual choice and the fact that the vast majority of people chose not to use these resources as you did, did not devote their lives to sports practice, and did not make the sacrifices that you did that eventually led to your gold medal. Instead, these people chose differently and used the same roads and bridges to drive themselves to fast food restaurants and gorged themselves on foods that were not conducive to winning a gold medal. They used the same roads and bridges to drive home so they could sit on their couches and watch sitcoms while you trained. Therefore, the government’s roads and bridges were not a necessary precondition of achieving the gold medal; your talent, initiative, sacrifice, hard work, and dedication were far more critical to your ultimate success.
It should be especially noted that, in the context of the Olympic sports, over the past century, the nations that have attributed their athletes’ ultimate success to their governments’ “roads and bridges”, namely, their systemic approach and infrastructure, rather than individual talent, choice, and dedication, were not free countries. They included countries from the former Soviet Union, Eastern European countries who used to be behind the “Iron Curtain”, and, currently, China, North Korea, Cuba, and various and sundry authoritarian dictatorships with command economies. Children who showed athletic promise were separated from their families, lived in government housing with other athletes for the remainder of their athletic career, and were trained at government facilities by government teachers. These countries did not want to leave their athletes’ training to individual choice and the so-called chaos that they believed would ensue if there were many different training facilities, philosophies, approaches, and regimens. Or, in the words of President Obama, everybody having “their own fire service”. (Incidentally, what exactly is wrong with having several private companies offer fire prevention and protection services and letting the consumers choose?)
Government research did not create the Internet; human beings created the Internet. Everything in this world that is man-made was created through the individual genius of its creator or creators. Every accomplishment by a human being was the result of blood, sweat, tears, dedication, sacrifice, and effort by a human being. The world should not be thankful to the United States government for creating the Internet. The world as well as the United States government should be thankful to great individuals of creativity and accomplishment for creating something that was not there beforehand. Even more incisively, President Obama does not merely ask Americans for a “thank you” letter or newspaper advertisement that expresses appreciation for the role of government. In actuality, his words provide the argumentative underpinnings for extracting more money in taxes and for aggregating even more power in the hands of the government. If you are not responsible for the success of your business through your own intelligence and hard work, he believes that you should not be entrusted to retain the fruits of your intelligence and hard work. Instead, he thinks that government should take an ever greater share of these fruits, and that he should be entrusted with the power to decide what to do with them.
Now, when President Obama says “lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back”, he must be referring to financiers like Warren Buffett and George Soros, to Microsoft’s Bill Gates, to Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and people like them who have so much wealth that they could live in opulence for the rest of their lives even if 99 percent of their wealth were to be confiscated by the government. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of working Americans cannot afford to share any more of their hard-earned money with the government. If this lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with President Obama wishes to “give something back” to the government, its members are welcome to commit only their own wealth to this endeavor.
Boiled down to its essential elements, President Obama’s argument for the government’s share in your success is no different from the “Divine Right of Kings” theory that was prevalent up until the late 18th century. Three centuries ago, you owed your life, earthly existence, and all of your material possessions to the king because it was on his land that you lived and it was his air that you breathed. 223 years ago, on Bastille Day, the French Revolution was put in motion and accomplished a relatively small change in the grand scheme of the “Divine Right of Kings” theory by executing French King Louis XVI and substituting the collective government in his stead. So, the theory was essentially renamed “Divine Right of Government” or “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” or whatever and now you owed your life, earthly existence, and all of your material possessions to the government. From your point of view as a citizen, you may have exchanged the old master for a new master, but you are still a slave nonetheless.
President Obama’s ideology that you owe your life, earthly existence, and all of your material possessions to the government directly contradicts the events of 236 years ago, in 1776, when the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution vested in each person, individually, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. His speech on Bastille Day was his true allegiance to the ideals of the French Revolution, not to the ideals of the American Revolution. Having taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004, President Obama knows very well to which revolution he owes his ideological allegiance. Now, so do you, the readers of The Cassandra Times.
