Darr: “President Obama is Anti-Business”
by July 17, 2012 8:29 pm 87 views
Elected officials often send out periodic columns. Most of the time, they are dull and jump into a current hot political topic.
Lt. Gov. Mark Darr uses his biweekly column to take on some recent comments made by President Obama, which he says are anti-business.
From the Lieutenant Governor…
I was disturbed this week when I watched a video of President Obama giving a campaign speech in Virginia. As I watched it, I couldn’t believe that I was listening to this from an American president.
He said, “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own…If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
What he was basically saying is that it takes a village to build a business. In any society, of course you are going to interact with many people who will influence you along the way, or deal with others who provide services to your business that will be of help. However, it seemed the president was trying to make the case that people succeed in life because of government programs.
This does not represent the American spirit that I know. More Americans find success every day and it is through their personal drive, intellect, skill, and willingness to take risk that they succeed. Sure they may have enjoyed the benefits of a government program along the way, but not everyone who benefits in the same way succeeds in the same way. Entrepreneurs all over this country must possess initiative, creativity, and business skills to create new businesses and innovative products.
President Obama, who has never worked in the business world, does not understand the personal risk that business-owners take. They invest their own money, sweat, and time. The President wants to redistribute other people’s wealth by force. Where is the risk in that? The President does not seem to care whether or not businesses succeed.
President Obama does not understand that businesses need to turn a profit to stay in business. He does not understand that businesses need to save money and h
ave to reinvest those profits to keep their business secure and competitive. A president should not disparage and seek to penalize those who have been successful.
No one is denying that we need government. No one is discrediting the influence public school teachers have on future leaders of this country or the usefulness of government-funded interstates or other government programs, but government is not the provider of all that is good in America. In socialist countries, governments have sought to “control the means of production”. In America, the means of production are in the hands of individuals and corporations founded to meet supply and demand in the marketplace. I believe this freedom is part of what the Founders meant in the Declaration of Independence when they wrote about the rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
We live in the greatest country on earth. There are many things that make this country great. One of them is the value of individualism. Americans are not inspired to greatness by the bureaucratic processes of government. They are inspired by stories of individuals throughout our country’s history who have taken risks, defied odds, and exceeded expectations.
Only in America can an Arkansan like Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, build a business from the ground up, starting with one retail store and expand it successfully into the largest retailer in the world. Walton started his first store, not with a loan from the government, but with a loan from his father-in-law, and with money he had saved up himself. His is a true entrepreneur's story of what is possible in this country and there are a million more stories.
The president likes to talk negatively about big corporations and business owners and those who have done well financially when it is politically beneficial to do so. Though, he willingly accepts money from those same people when it comes time to campaign.
America needs a president who is pro-business even when it's not an election year. We need real leadership, not the rhetoric and destructive policies of President Obama.