"You didn't build that," President Barack Obama lectured business owners in July. "Somebody else made that happen."
In saying that during a rally in Roanoke, Va., Obama, who last night accepted his party's nomination to run for re-election, made it clear he is entirely unqualified to make decisions affecting the economy.
By tradition, the holiday we celebrated Monday, Labor Day, has become an occasion for Americans to recognize the importance of hard work and, yes, to pat ourselves on the back.
That is appropriate because we, not the government, as Obama and other speakers at this week's Democratic National Convention continue to believe, drive the economy. We built it, we made it the envy of the world, and we made it an engine of prosperity at a level simply impossible with other economic systems.
Perhaps Obama does not understand private enterprise because virtually his entire career has been in academia and government. In government, there can be no catastrophic failure. Tax increases and deficit spending ensure that.
It is not so in the private sector, where thousands of businesses, some small and some large, fail every year. It is not that way for the working woman and man, who must be partners with management to ensure their businesses do not fail.
More American working people are beginning to understand that government makes it more difficult for their companies - and them - to succeed.
This week we paused to celebrate our successes, whether in putting food on our own tables or building small businesses.
We did this. We built this nation. We have to struggle day in and day out to stay afloat and, with any luck, get ahead just a little bit. Claiming otherwise is a slap in the faces of tens of millions of good, hard-working men and women.