re: You didn't build that

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You and everyone before you and here now who makes it possible.

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I've never built a road in my life. Nor would I take credit for it.

I just ask, because this w/e I was visiting one of the Charleston area plantations with some friends. As I walked amongst what passed for slave quarters, which of course were built by the same slaves, I wondered how the "You-didn't-build-that. Somebody-else-built-that-for-you" stupidity would apply. Strangely the same pseudologic holds.

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NFL players and Joe the Plumber are all able to succeed due in part to the collective effort of ALL OF US.

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I don't deny the hard work professional athletes put in.

But if you don't acknowledge the difference between their hard work to play a game and the hard work put in by the people who actually make this country work then you are being willfully obtuse.

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Can you explain the difference? I actually do think there is any....

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You are 100 % correct. Would that more on the right were man enough to have admitted this when they were apoplectic over Obama pointing this out by saying "you didn't build that"

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No one seriously disputes that public works are paid for by all and generally benefit all. Where I part ways is when many on the left seem to think this gives some a claim on the efforts of another.

Let's say you and I were neighbors and we built a bridge together. Every morning we both set off toward the bridge. I stop halfway across and throw a line in the water to catch a fish to feed my family. You continue walking and build a business in the city across the river that we could not reach before the bridge. After years of struggle and hardship, your business becomes successful and you become rich. I am healthy, more than a little sick of fish, but not rich.

Under no circumstance do you owe me anything. I have no claim on your wealth. None. Not because we built a bridge together at least.