It is fair to say that we know more tonight than we ever have about the president’s view of business and the economy. His assertion over the weekend that, ‘If you got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen’ explains nearly everything. He wasn’t talking about God, he was talking about government.

Here is a man that believes not just that the government provided framework of roads, bridges, defense and law enforcement helps the private sector. He believes these things are are the nerve center, the driving force. More important than any individual, talent, enterprise or initiative. As he put it: ‘There are a lot of smart people out.’ As for diligence: ‘There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.’ Success? ‘You didn’t get there on your own.’

This is a view that successful businessmen, women are merely the ones who did better at taking advantage of the benefits that government has bestowed. Therefore, he thinks they should be glad to pay an even greater share of federal taxes than they do. He calls that, ‘giving back,’ as if the government conferred all that they have and they shouldn’t mind returning a bit more of it where it came from.

This explains why so much stimulus money was spent to protect government and why his legislation on healthcare and financial reform involved extending the reach and power of, you guessed it, government.

More.