This narrative is cribbed almost verbatim from the narrative of George Lakoff, a progressive linguistics activist and Professor at Berkeley. Like Warren, Lakoff was one of the academics who helped frame how the Occupy Wall Street movement presented itself. Lakoff’s writings and theories seek to transform progressive politics and he is a frequent speaker on how progressives can reframe the political debate.
Lakoff developed a linguistic narrative that progressives needed to counter conservatives by focusing on the role of government in enabling individual success, a narrative in which no person became successful on his or her own:
Nobody makes a dollar in this country in business without using the common wealth…. The idea that there’s a self-made man, that’s there’s a self-made millionaire is false, it is absolutely false, and that is the thing that Obama missed…. Without this you don’t have those roads, you don’t have that internet, you don’t have the banking system, etc. [ERROR: No URL was passed to the generic video BBCode]
Read how Lakoff framed the issue in a publication several years ago, then listen to the Obama and Warren speeches, they are not identical but very close substantively and linguistically (emphasis mine):
There is no such thing as a self-made man. Every businessman has used the vast American infrastructure, which the taxpayers paid for, to make his money. He did not make his money alone. He used taxpayer infrastructure. He got rich on what other taxpayers had paid for: the banking system, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and Commerce Departments, and the judicial system, where nine-tenths of cases involve corporate law. These taxpayer investments support companies and wealthy investors. There are no self-made men! The wealthy have gotten rich using what previous taxpayers have paid for. They owe the taxpayers of this country a great deal and should be paying it back.
Until we remove people such as this who exhibit defective thinking skills from the academy, we will remain up that proverbial creek.
Well, maybe we should keep a few on display, as a warning.
And these non-self made businessmen don’t pay taxes to support that infrastructure?
Idiots.
If Professor Lakoff, President Obama and Elizabeth Warren are right, then why isn’t every citizen that utilizes roads, bridges, the banking system and the internet a millionaire?
I’m just asking.
Obama, Warren, and Lakoff would have us believe that “commonwealth” means “common wealth” – a big pool of money that is the government’s job to dole out to us deserving hoi polloi as they see fit. As part of their narrative, they’re pushing the false idea that businesses (created by the aforementioned hoi polloi) paid NOTHING to support the construction of infrastructure, schools, and other stuff, and that Beneficent, All-wise Government took it upon themselves to lay the roads, build the schools and create the Internet, much like God created the Garden of Eden for His children to live in. By claiming that the success of business is due solely to others (i.e., government and “other taxpayers”), they believe they can make open-ended demands on any and all revenue (not “profit”, but revenue) private businesses earn.
James Taranto posted a great rebuttal to this specious argument a few months back in one of his Best of the Web columns at wsj.com. I haven’t been able to dig it up, but it’s there. Somewhere.
This person obviously does not know how wealth is created. Wealth is created by mutual trade between a buyer and a seller.
Do these academics think that ancient people sat around and waited for some government official to build a road, so they could trade with their neighbors?
If there was no government today, the people would create trade among themselves. Like-minded people would band together for mutual protection. A barter system would arise if there was no money/banking system.
The wheels of commerse would still turn, it’s just that people with no skills, such as a progressive linguistics activist or a community organizer, would probably starve because no one would be there to give them a handout.
is a self-made man he compounded from a pile of his own bullshit