A Conservative Manifesto

That would be an appropriate title for Charles Krauthammer's latest column (NRO) in which he rebuts President Obama's latest socialist rant ("You didn't build that").

Or as one commentator on the NRO website put it - "Oh, if Mitt Romney could learn to lip synch the great Dr. K...."

Romney could do worse, much worse, than naming Krauthammer as his running mate. Or, better yet, Mitt could transfer all of his delegates to the great man.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/310088/did-state-make-you-great-charles-krauthammer

I'd like to make one other point not specifically addressed in this wonderful article.

Democrats have been trying frantically to limit the damage done by Obama’s remarks by claiming that when he said, “You didn’t build that”, he was referring to bridges and roads, not businesses created by entrepreneurs. Even if you believe this incredible assertion, Obama was still wrong. They did build it. The government is able to fund its infrastructure projects along with a mind-reeling number of less worthy endeavors only by utilizing its awful power of taxation and confiscating a significant portion of the profits of the producer class.
You see, Obama and his liberal friends have it exactly backwards. It is the private sector’s energy, enterprise, risk-taking, hard work, and genius (CK's list) that produces the wealth that allows government to indulge in its obscene excesses. If it was the other way around, the industrial (aka – capitalist) revolution would never have occurred. Not in 19th century America with its meager infrastructure and no Leviathan state in sight.
The people who "didn't build that" are the nearly half the country's inhabitants that pays zero income taxes, many of whom actually get tax rebates. Obama doesn't dare criticize them, much less ask them to contribute "their fair share". This is what government "creates" - a multitude that gets to reap the benefits of the producer class just as we all do, but free of charge.
Countering the banal truism that all individuals are influenced by society is the equal truism that society is shaped largely by the contributions of a small contingent of unique individuals.