According to Obama and Liberals, we are renters who should be grateful that the government lets us use its stuff.

Obama's defenders are trying to parse the meaning of "that." Perhaps Obama meant "bridges, roads, etc." when he said "If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that," but how does that help him.

His problem is that he's acting like the government is some near divine entity that can create bridges and roads out of nothing.

Obviously, that view is nonsense. The government doesn't create; it takes from individuals and channels what first belonged to the individual into collective projects for the benefit of individuals.

To put it bluntly, the government couldn't have built a damn thing without our tax money.

That means that we are the owners of everything built by the government. We are the investors. We are the ones who built "that," whatever "that" is.

The idea that we should be grateful for the government is absurd. We created the government to do collectively the things we couldn't do individually. When the government does the things we collectively tell it to do, we have no reason to feel grateful - it's just doing its damn job. Are we supposed to feel grateful when the dinner we buy at a restaurant isn't contaminated? Hell no! We paid for the dinner!

Here is the text of Obama's "you didn't build that" speech.

The entire speech consists of Obama's statist, totalitarian view of the role of the government vis a vis the people. Here's an example:

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President -- because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together. (Applause.)

Excuse me? We built the middle class????

"We" didn't build the middle class. The middle class doesn't exist. Individuals who are middle class exist. The individuals who we call "middle class" "built" the middle class by working hard and wanting to be rich. The government helped by not taxing the middle class into oblivion or shaking it down, as happens all around the world, and in Chicago, every time it gets the chance. Here is Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass talking about father's experience with the government:

The next day he'd wake up and do it again. Day after day, decade after decade. Weekdays and weekends, no vacations, no time to see our games, no money for extras, not even forMcDonald's. My dad and Uncle George, and my mom and my late Aunt Mary, killing themselves in their small supermarket on the South Side of Chicago.

There was no federal bailout money for us. No Republican corporate welfare. No Democratic handouts. No bipartisan lobbyists working the angles. No Tony Rezkos. No offshore accounts. No Obama bucks.

Just two immigrant brothers and their families risking everything, balancing on the economic high wire, building a business in America. They sacrificed, paid their bills, counted pennies to pay rent and purchase health care and food and not much else. And for their troubles they were muscled by the politicos, by the city inspectors and the chiselers and the weasels, all those smiling extortionists who held the government hammer over all of our heads.

I thought about this after I heard what Obama told a campaign crowd the other day, speaking about business owners and why they were successful.

"You didn't get there on your own," Obama said. "I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."

If you've got a business, you didn't build that? Somebody else made that happen?

Somebody else, Mr. President? Who, exactly? Government?

One of my earliest memories as a boy at the store was that of the government men coming from City Hall. One was tall and beefy. The other was wiry. They wanted steaks.

We didn't eat red steaks at home or yellow bananas. We took home the brown bananas and the brown steaks because we couldn't sell them. But the government men liked the big, red steaks, the fat rib-eyes two to a shrink-wrapped package. You could put 20 or so in a shopping bag.

"Thanks, Greek," they'd say.

That was government.

Right now, I'm more than a little perturbed. I learned a few days ago that I now have to post non-refundable jury fees at the time of the Case Management Conference, i.e. 18 months before trial. Previously, I would have to post those fees two weeks before trial and they were refundable if the case didn't go to trial.

90+% of all cases settle. So, what this is is the government finding a revenue stream - a tax - without calling it a tax.

Sound familiar?

This may seem like small potatoes, but it is repeated in so many different ways in our interactions with the government.

Right now, it seems like the government is treating us like renters. We don't own the things the government has. We are just profit centers for the government, and the government is trying to figure how to gouge every last cent out of its renters.

That is not the vision of the Founders.