President Obama’s comments chastising American business owners and job creators during a Roanoke, Virginia speech broadcast on C-SPAN are rightfully attracting backlash. During the speech Barack Obama was attempting to make a point about all the outside influences which bolster the creation of a profitable business or successful person, but completely missed the mark – perhaps his teleprompter was broken.
Obama Speech Transcript excerpts republished by The Blaze:
“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.”
“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.”
Although there is absolutely nothing wrong with the ‘if you can read thank a teacher’ style argument, President Obama’s speech was far more focused on disparaging some segments of society than it was on on uplifting all Americans. Barack Obama’s classwarfare tactics will likely do him more harm than good at the polls in November and further divide our great country.
