Posted on 07/26/2012 9:21:14 AM PDT by Greg Swann
It's vampire versus vampire at the National Review. In response to President Obama's "you didn't build that" attack on individual initiative, a New Hampshire contractor insisted that he did so build his business. Except, as Think Progress reports, the guy is a rent-seeker. He built his business by the sweat of the tax-payer's brow in the form of government-subsidized loans, grants and contracts.
The Think Progress article is disgusting, and the comments are worse, but the National Review piece isn't much better:
This man pays taxes that support this government endeavor (and many others he does not benefit from),That would be the logical fallacy Two Wrongs Make A Right.
and he is operating in a business environment in which all his competitors have access to government funds.And that is the logical fallacy Tu Quoque.
This is me in Man Alive!:
The paths to error are infinite, but two landmarks I have learned to rely on, in listening to people trying to justify their evil actions, are the logical fallacies Tu Quoque and Two Wrongs Make A Right. Tu Quoque is Latin. It means, “You do it, too.” When you catch your teenager swiping a beer, the pre-fabricated rationale will surely be, “Well, you drink, why can’t I?!?” And you were probably very young when you first heard some little proto-brute justifying his vengeance by bellowing, “Well, he hit me first!” -- ergo, two wrongs make a right. You should probably be on your guard against any statement that starts with a “well” and ends with an exclamation point. That particular verbal construction seems to fit very comfortably in the mouths of liars and thugs. But when you hear those two logical fallacies being deployed in tandem, what you are hearing, almost certainly, is a cunningly-crafted rationalization of an abominable injustice.This is the comment I left to the atrocious argument at National Review:
Taking money from the government in any form is welfare -- receiving stolen funds.That was a conversation stopper. I shouldn't complain, though. Very often, when I leave comments at conservative web sites, they never show up at all.You can't avoid using government roads; the state is a coercive monopoly on roads and other so-called "public services."
You definitely can avoid taking money that has been stolen from innocent tax-payers.
When you take that money, no matter how you rationalize it, you are a moocher, a looter, a thug, a welfare slave.
This is obvious, no need to tap-dance around it.
Are you bursting with the need to say, "Yeah, but..."? Let me do it for you:
"Yeah, but surely I'm entitled to get something back from my taxes." The word 'entitled' almost always denotes welfare-slavery, but it means nothing in a context where you do not have a legally-enforceable contract. Your money was stolen from you, yes. But once it was, it became part of a vast pool of stolen funds, and none of that money is yours. When you presume to claim some of it, you are making yourself complicit in the slavery of innocent people whose sole crime was working to provide for themselves and their loved ones.
"Yeah, but if I don't take that money, somebody else will." If so, the people who take it will have soiled themselves. What benefit to you self-adoration will you realize by soiling your self?
"Yeah, but just because I built my business with coerced 'investments,' that doesn't make me the bad guy!" Yes, it does. There is no way to tap-dance around theft.
In truth, most small-businesses don't take government money. The owners of those firms are the victims of the state's countless intrusions, and they persevere gamely while bearing unbearable parasitic burdens. They did build their businesses themselves, with no stolen funds or rent-seeking favors, and they have every right to be proud of themselves. But by giving rent-seekers cover -- by permitting tax-looting thugs to call themselves business-people -- they arm their own enemies.
Here is a sign I made for honest entrepreneurs:
I would love to see this posted prominently in every place of business in America. If you are not the crook, the leech, the moocher that the president of the United States says you are, tell it to the world -- starting with your customers.
And if you have taken tax money in the past? If you have campaigned for competition-killing laws? Go forth and sin no more. You were wrong, but now you know you were wrong. The past cannot be changed, but the future can. If you continue to try to live as a looter, you will know without doubt what you are -- and so will everyone else. When your neighbors and competitors finally get up the nerve to celebrate their own virtue, they will have no trouble at all expressing contempt for your vice.
And in the battle of vampire versus vampire, scrupulous honesty slays every demon.
You mistake was thinking the rabid Democrat Fascistic party hacks at “Think Progress” were making a factual, intellectually honest report. They aren’t.
> If someone really did get hit first and they defended themselves, that’s not two wrongs.
You are conflating rhetoric with retaliation. When a bully says, “Well, he hit me first!” he is rationalizing his own evil, not seeking any sort of justice.
> Also, accepting government contracts for proper government functions and getting paid for doing the agreed upon work is not mooching.
It is receiving stolen funds. There is no getting around this. The state does not have any right to confiscate and redistribute the funds. Whatever you tell yourself about propriety is trumped by the fact that the money involved was stolen. An involuntary transaction is a crime, and “proper” cannot mean anything in the context of a crime.
> Avoid the government every way you can and your life will be cleaner and simpler even if it means you give up a dollar your accountant might have squeezed from a transaction.
My hat is off to you.
I could be wrong but government doesn't usually lend money. They sometimes guarantee a loan, but the loan is made by a private bank or consortium.
In the case of an FHA loan, the loan is guaranteed but normally the bank is going to come after your house before they try to pry the money back from the government.
Funny story. I had some property in a town that was up for redevelopment grants. I never took the money, what improvements I did, I paid for myself.
Years later I found out that the city management had taken grant money for they work I did, they claimed they did it and turned in for the redevelopment funds. There were some audits and a grand jury and it looked like for a while some of these guys would go to the pen, but in the end I think they went into quiet retirement.
> Another reason to make Federal and State government as small as possible.
I vote for zero, but I will be happy to see any movement at all in your direction. Hell, I’d be happy to see the Titanic come to a stop before it hits an iceberg.
> Social security is the same. People say they were forced to pay in and now they want theirs. It doesn’t matter to them that their money was already spent. That they are enslaving those still working by ever increasing amounts to make good on promises those working people never made. And for those who say well the government shouldn’t have spent the money I ask what generation was it exactly that voted in the politicians that did spend it and continued electing them?
That was beautiful, right straight down the line.
So because he does work for the Government he is a “rent seeker”? That an utterly moronic, intellectually indefensible argument.
Yep. Cut taxes to starve the monster; and the monster will shrink.
No other way to do it. The monster always wants more, the monster wants to be fed more and more and screams when food is withheld.
A hoard of locusts will keep eating until everything is destroyed; the hoard keeps eating and multiplies.
“...what generation was it exactly that voted in the politicians that did spend it and continued electing them?”
Yup!
Taxpayers in the US have been stiffed for decades to fund programs which politicians promise and deliver to people who don’t want to work. (We’re NOT talking about necessary programs and benefits for the people who are actually disabled or otherwise unable to take care of themselves.)
I would say to these insatiable and corrupt politicians:
“If you want money for still more exorbitantly expensive, unworkable and unsuccessful ‘programs’, go talk to the people you hired to take my money from me for all these many years. If they don’t have it, then DON’T come back to me demanding MORE money … and calling me greedy and racist if I object!!!”
> So when a soldier, sailor, marine or airman signs a contract to defend this country with his life, he’s a looter, thug or welfare slave?
Most government jobs programs subsidize Democrats. The military is a government jobs program that exists to subsidize Republican voters — and U.S. corporations with overseas interests. How can we know this is so? Because the one function the state might proclaim as a “proper” function of the military — defending the nation’s borders — is the one mission the state won’t undertake.
Sorry to share the brutal truth. I know the military is a religion around here, and I genuinely like the many soldiers and veterans I know. But the U.S. military is a scam, just like the rest of the government. How could you ever expect it to be otherwise?
> What do you think they will do with your cunning plan of tossing them out in the street with no options?
I said nothing of the sort. I said that putative “business-people” should get off the tax-payer’s tit, if they want to brag about their independence.
I sold some property to a wealthy lady who wanted to give the US Government a Post Office.
She got approval from the Post Office rent free for life and she paid to have it built.
She had 1 provision that if they ever moved the Post Office would be deeded to the Town.
She build it and paid for it but they won't move in until she takes the provision out if they ever move the Town would own the property.
Today the Post Office just lets the building sit.
I vote for the guys who wrote the following. They were much smarter than you:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,...”
“You can’t avoid using government roads”
Those aren’t government roads. They are OUR roads for personal use and commercial use. The government builds NOTHING on its own. It can only build once it has taxed those businesses and personal incomes, including salaries, from those business to build those roads. Those roads are built by businesses. Period.
I think part of the problem with the whole "didn't build that" issue is that, even taking Obama at what he meant, he is raising and beating to death a huge straw man argument. Of COURSE everyone knows that in some way, we all (well, most of us) contribute to society. No one ever made the opposite claim.
The fact is though, that not only have business creators contributed like everyone else, they have contributed FAR MORE than the rest. They owe NO MORE than what they already have given.
Thank you for your informative post. Your experience cements that idea in my mind. Again, thank you!
The State has the force to do as it pleases. They are called the police. If one resists [does not comply] with the State’s directive[s],one will have deadly force applied against them by the State. The State is compriesd by individuals put in power one way or the other by the citizens. When good people are put in positions of power, there is nothing to worry about. However in the last few elections, the citizens of the United States has said, via the voting process, that they preferred evil people ruling over them. It is being done.
I’m trying to follow the argument. On one hand private sector businesses provide jobs, increase economic activity and, since they are in that hated “rich” sector, they pay a disproportionate percentages of taxes. The author calls them leeches. On the other hand are the “takers” who squander a free education, collect WIC and AFDC to suport their illegitimate kids; go to casinos with EBT cards the other guys pay for; collect endless unemployment; live in subsidized housing or in their folks’ basement because their public policy degree was a waste of money but they are not leeches. Does anyone else see a flaw in the logic?
Resume of a Leech:
Dropped out of school - wasted $10k/ year of other peoples’ money; couldn’t get a job; fathered or got pregnant out of wedlock; gave birth through the ER and stuck sombody else with the bill; got WIC or AFDC that somebody else paid for; went to “Job Training” somebody else paid for on roads somebody else paid for while riding a bus somebody else paid for. Got a job through a government grant somebody else paid for but got fired for absenteeism. Then went on 99 weeks of unemployment somebody else paid for. Collects the EITC somebody else paid for; gets CHIP that somebody else pays for to cover kids; uses the EBT card sombody else pays for to buy beer, go to casinos and buy lottery tickets.
Resume of a Leech:
Dropped out of school - wasted $10k/ year of other peoples’ money; couldn’t get a job; fathered or got pregnant out of wedlock; gave birth through the ER and stuck sombody else with the bill; got WIC or AFDC that somebody else paid for; went to “Job Training” somebody else paid for on roads somebody else paid for while riding a bus somebody else paid for. Got a job through a government grant somebody else paid for but got fired for absenteeism. Then went on 99 weeks of unemployment somebody else paid for. Collects the EITC somebody else paid for; gets CHIP that somebody else pays for to cover kids; uses the EBT card sombody else pays for to buy beer, go to casinos and buy lottery tickets.
Resume of a Leech:
Dropped out of school - wasted $10k/ year of other peoples’ money; couldn’t get a job; fathered or got pregnant out of wedlock; gave birth through the ER and stuck sombody else with the bill; got WIC or AFDC that somebody else paid for; went to “Job Training” somebody else paid for on roads somebody else paid for while riding a bus somebody else paid for. Got a job through a government grant somebody else paid for but got fired for absenteeism. Then went on 99 weeks of unemployment somebody else paid for. Collects the EITC somebody else paid for; gets CHIP that somebody else pays for to cover kids; uses the EBT card sombody else pays for to buy beer, go to casinos and buy lottery tickets.
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