You Didn't Build That!

This meme is both puzzling and frustrating.  The words of the quotation and the words of commentary are weirdly paired, resulting in dizzying discord for the logical mind.  Frankly, it pains me even to lay eyes upon it.  (No pun intended.)

The only way I know to make any good come from a meme as irresponsibly crafted as this one is to use it as a tool for investigative learning.  So with that in mind, here we go:

I have not determined the original source for the meme, nor do I remember how I first stumbled across it, except that I keep running into people online who are refuting it.  These debunkers are typically critics of President Obama's policies who reject the notion that the words of Thomas Paine are being used to support the recent words of the President.

The words inside the quotation marks are easily attributable to Thomas Paine.  They appeared in an essay from 1795 entitled, "Agrarian Justice".

What's odd about the quote as shown is that Paine is cut off mid-sentence and made to sound like anything but the eloquent intellectual he was.  Given that the meme's creator seems wanting to transfer the authority of Paine to this message, it surprises me that his words would be so butchered.

Note that Paine is clearly intending to present a simile of some sort.  ". . . and it is as impossible . . ." As impossible as what? We don't know because the creator of this Internet meme chose to truncate his sentence. Next, then, we have to ask ourselves what might be the purpose of this choice, which means that we need to examine the original quote and at least some of its context:

 "Land, as before said, is the free gift of the Creator in common to the human race. Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally.

Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came."

So what's not to like about the rest of the sentence?  It seems to support the President's words fairly well, if we assume that the caption "You Didn't Build That" is meant to refer the President's controversial remarks during a campaign speech in Roanoke,Virginia.

Here's the portion of the President's speech which included that phrase:

    " 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."

The second caption, "Notice that Thomas Paine did not use the word . . . government!" is completely mystifying.  Where are we to notice this?  In the incomplete quote provided for us to consider?  And what does the word government have to do with the message presented here?

But wait.  What if  this last part is intended as the the meme's most important component? It is presented as an emphatic imperative, after all.  Perhaps the intended message is not to support President Obama's assertion, but rather to disagree with it.  Are we being directed to consider the difference between "society" and "government"?  President Obama is often characterized as supporting big government.  Is that what this is about?

But then how to explain this blogger's characterization of the meme as being circulated by leftists?  

The essay in which these words of Paine's appear was written in the midst of the French Revolution and describes in great detail a plan "To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property: And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age."

The essay is all about government -- revising government, revising society, re-defining what it means to be civilized.

So who created this Internet meme and what is the intended message?

I have no clue.  But I did enjoy reading both Thomas Paine's essay and President Obama's campaign remarks. I particularly like this bit from "Agrarian Justice":

"Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before."

If I were in the business of designing internet memes, and if my intention was to suggest President Obama's remarks were a paraphrase of Thomas Paine's, this is the one I would have made:

What do you think?