Dismissing the Dream

“If you’re one of the millions of Americans counted as part of the eight percent unemployed, you didn’t get there on your own. Somebody else made that happen. And he’s running for reelection.”

~    Nick Ryan, Townhall.com

I’ve read a large amount of outraged reactions to President Obama’s ridiculous statement that “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,” Some commentators are suggesting that perhaps that one unscripted line, which gave America a frightening glimpse into the way this president really thinks, may cost him the election.

From their tweets to God’s ears.

But no one I’ve read has captured the essence of this blatant insult to small business owners the way John Kass of the Chicago Tribune has in today’s article, “Who else, Mr. President?”

Kass writes about his father and his uncle toiling on the small businessman’s treadmill in their little supermarket. He writes with a quiet passion for his father’s hard-earned accomplishments and a seething, understated scorn for this “leader” who doesn’t understand the country he is in the process of strangling.

There are a lot of people like John Kass in the U.S. In fact, I’m one of them. My husband had his own construction business for many years. He worked from dawn to dark, and most years our family barely got by. We never saw a dime of government money. Nor, more importantly, did we ask for or want any.

The president might ask if my husband used the roads. Yes, Mr. President. He drove all over Southern California. And we, the taxpayers, paid for those roads.

The president might ask if he had a good teacher. Yes, Mr. President. Pete had many good teachers in school. But none of them taught him construction. No, he learned how to build on the job, from a European immigrant small-business owner who had come to this country and become wealthy by working hard, taking risks, and living the American dream.

The days when such an achievement is possible are drawing to a rapid close under the confiscatory ways of an ever-expanding monster government. The American dream? The hard work is still part of it. It’s the endless possibilities that are gone.