Huh, I think I hit submit by accident, before replying. Anyway: - Edit 1
Before modification by Dan at 02/09/2012 12:46:36 AM
Convening in a stadium mostly built with municipal (i.e. government) bonds and trotting out successful entrepreneurs to thank Romney and Bain for all the help that got them started is a poor example of self-reliance. It says Staples, Steel Dynamics etc. only succeeded thanks to investor, supplier, employee and consumer contributions IN ADDITION TO (not instead of) its owners notable ones. Successful American businesses are the result of the American economic system, and are therefore community, not individual, achievements.
Community does not mean government. But hey, nothing like drawing a false choice between all or nothing alternatives where "more than one person's involvement" equals proof of the moral supremacy of government solutions, and a straw man position of individual accomplishment defined as accomplishments that relied on nothing from no one else. SOMEBODY ELSE MADE THE FOOD YOU ATE WHILE INVENTING THAT DEVICE IN YOUR HAND_BUILT GARAGE! OMG! YOU ARE TOTALLY RELIANT ON THE COMMUNITY, THEREFORE SOCIALISM WORKS!!!
Since the Republican National Convention culminated in that admission, what remains to debate?
Obama's implict claim that someone else is entitled to a claim for the credit and/or profits. The road was already built from taxes already paid, the municipal bonds were voluntarily purchased (not that I agree with bonds being sold for such purposes), and the community which enabled all this to happen, was established and built well before the socialist ball got rolling. Government did not create that community, it subsists off of it. Government is more concerned with interfering in the community when it does not meet the racial makeup the government thinks appropriate, or wants to consume substances the government disapproves of it buying and selling, or wants to engage in private business transactions that people who know nothing about business dislike on the grounds that the transactions might make people rich. Isn't it fallacious to so sharply divide the past from the future, in terms of taxes? The road has been already built and the entrepreneur has succeeded, but there are further roads to be built to be utilized by further entrepreneurs. There were recent tax cuts and wars, so doesn't that just indicate that it's a pretty fluid situation?
Your comparison is like saying that anyone who buys health insurance but opposes Obamacare is a hypocrite. Not that there aren't more than their fair share of hypocrites at the RNC (i.e. anyone who opposes or supports some but not all of the various Wars on Abstract Concepts: War on Terror, War on Poverty, War on Drugs etc). Sure we'll trumpet free enterprise and lack of regulation, but pot, oh HELL no! Romney has explicitly declared military cuts off the table, IIRC, but we have no land enemies, and our naval dominance makes the British Empire's Admiralty look like pikers for merely settling for a navy bigger than any two. Ours out-floats the REST OF THE WORLD, but no. THAT government program is untouchable. If the government did not build this country, the greatest in the world (and I dare any speaker at the RNC to say otherwise), why is it okay for government to try building the Happy Democratic Utopias of Iraq & Afghanistan (and presumably Iran)?
Not that it really matters. Chris Christie effectively threw in the towel for the presidential race with a speech that was not so much in support of the Romney 2012 Campaign as the Christie 2016 Campaign.