This is factually inaccurate. Socialism means state controlled services (i.e. healthcare).

Good, because the OP seemed convinced that individuals bear the sole responsibility for their accomplishments.

As for whats next, as far as Im concerned it doesn't really matter whats next. Some folks say its best to make family clans, others like republics, others an ancient greek style democracy, some like having a ceremonial monarch, etc. I happen to be happy enough with the general system of government here.

No, I think an individual bears most of the responsibility for his accomplishments. For example, a business that he started and owns.

Doesn't matter, businesses aren't built with only ideas.

well all those initiatives were not commenced by private industry/capital. They were all solid projects, that in hindsight were necessary for the current status of Americans. You can get into a definition gambit if you need to, but it doesn't change the outcome.

I had a chat with a fella from Alabama a few weeks back, his take was Americans are lousy at planning. There is no cohesive strategy to move forward. What they are good at is reacting to what HAS occurred. Yamamoto said it best after his Pearl Harbour strategy failed, a sleeping giant has been woken. The same occurred after 911.

So if you remove the instigator of change (the evil gubmit) the nation is still a loose amalgamation of states connected by telegraph, with each person in those states not willing to extend or innovate beyond their current status. When capitalism is afraid to move forward, and a socialist or collectivist method has to take the lead, what does that say.is so obviously biased and wrong its hard to take seriously.

So after all this you agree with Obama's summary statement

"The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

liberals showing once again they have no understanding of the economy.

Actually,

(A) In modern political discourse, some people do, in fact, appear to be contesting this. A lot of rhetoric from the right wing revolves around the notion that the government can do little if anything right and that everything would be better if the government would just shrivel up and let private business do it's thing. What Obama was trying to do, I think, is point out that the government (and society in general) can build a foundation that makes it easier to succeed.

Governmental investment in things like basic research, education, and infrastructure didn't make Bill Gates into Bill Gates (he obviously had a lot of personal drive and intelligence), but it was much easier for Bill Gates to build MSFT in America that if Gates had been born in Somalia (or, frankly, Detroit). While this may seem obvious to some people, there are actually people who think that pointing out this simple fact is somehow a justification for socialism and 95% marginal tax rates, which it isn't.

B) I agree with your second point that this logic should not be used to justify all governmental spending/regulation. That's why I'd personally like to see a more nuanced debate about exactly what things we want the government to do and what things we don't want it involved in instead of having this constantly drone from folks who believe that the government can't do anything right and therefore instinctively attack any statement that hints that maybe, just maybe, some parts of our lives are better thanks to governmental "interference" in the free market.

Obama's administration isn't building highways, it isn't going to Mars. It is enlarging the welfare state.

Obama's administration has a record amount of people on food stamps, wants welfare with no work, stopped the building of a pipeline, stopped the building of an airplane factory, wants students to take on more debt, and has continued the bail outs and excessive borrowing of the previous administration.

We aren't discussing whether building highways in the 50's was
socialist (it wasn't). We are discussing the current President's mindset on American society and how he thinks it functions. Apperently, he thinks that individual intelligence and hard work count for little in this country and if you are rich or have a business, it is because of the all mighty government.

It's sort of ironic that the President that overuses "I" in terms of his Presidency thinks "we" is the proper term for anyone else's success. Or maybe that's standard Obama think I don't want to go down that rabbit hole too deeply.

Congratulations, you know how to read. Yes, I agree with Obama's summary statement. That's not the part I have a problem with as I suspect you already know.

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding your statement, but are you saying that having a good idea is the only (or at least critical element of business success?)

If so, that is pretty ridiculous. There are plenty of examples of people who had good product ideas but failed because they didn't market them well or didn't negotiate good distribution networks, or whatever. For example, many people argue that Betamax was technologically superior to VHS, but VHS won because it did a better job in terms of licensing and marketing.

Similarly, there are lots of guys who didn't come up with the original product concept, but made tons of money because they were able to run a business very very well. As just one example, Ray Croc didn't come up with the "idea" of the hamburger, but he sure figured out how to get lots of people to buy their burgers from McDonalds instead of some other restaurant.

And just like great ideas can fail if they aren't backed up by a sharp business mind, they can fail if societal conditions don't allow them to thrive... For example, I bet Fed-Ex would be much less successful if it couldn't fly its planes into publicly subsidized airports, drive trucks on publicly subsidized highways regulated by speed and safety rules (driven by drivers whose credentials have been partially vetted by the publicly funded DMV), and deliver packages to addresses that were assigned to buildings according to a system of names and numbers overseen by a central organizing entity.

So you acknowledge he made a summary statement to explicitly clarify the confusion of his awkwardly worded/misspoken sentence, and yet you still want to dwell on the poorly worded sentence? When you give speeches for a living your going to say some things differently than you meant to, thats why you go back and clarify your previous sentence like he did. If he was typing up this as a written statement he would have just fixed the typo, but you can't do it that way when your speaking. Why is this interesting?

He didn't misspeak. He was hammering the point home.

"if you've been successful, you didn't do it on your own. You didn't do it on your own."

He said that twice! Was that also a gaffe? No, he's saying this specifically to his audience to make them feel good for not being as rich and successful as others and denigrates those who are successful by basically saying they were lucky.

The idea that "government can do little if anything right and that everything would be better if the government would just shrivel up and let private business do it's thing." is not inconsistent with the idea that we need to work together.

I'm in favor of voluntary cooperation via a market economy. Government "cooperation" is simply forced cooperation.

And I'm not saying that the things government has provided are not often useful. Just that forced funding of these things is both immoral and inefficient.

Just because we don't see private providers of many government services does not mean these would not exist in the absence of such government services. In many cases, competing with the government in areas it has chosen as its own domain is prohibited. And when it is not, it is difficult to peacefully compete with an enterprise funded by force.