You DID Build That: The brutal truth about government ‘services’ that Elizabeth Warren won't tell you

How progressive elites confuse government's legitimate role with bureaucratic incompetence—and why forgotten Americans know better

The blood of a traditionalist conservative still runs hot when a Massachusetts progressive ventures to school us about who built America. Elizabeth Warren’s 2011 declaration that “nobody got rich on his own” became Barack Obama’s even more damaging rallying cry in 2012: “You didn’t build that!”

These patronizing proclamations from our coastal elites reveal not merely their contempt for entrepreneurial achievement, but a fundamental confusion between “The State” as an institution and the parade of incompetents who operate it.

This distinction matters—profoundly. The state, properly understood, represents a foundational compact by which the people organize themselves for mutual protection and the preservation of ordered liberty.

What Warren and Obama defend, however, is something altogether different: a bloated apparatus of bureaucratic meddlers whose primary achievement has been the systematic destruction of everything they touch.

Western Civilization has labored under the thumb of liberalism for three centuries, but the stranglehold tightened dramatically after World War II. What emerged? Not the limited government envisioned by the Founders—understanding that “government is at best a necessary evil” —but a managerial leviathan treating citizens as livestock and viewing failure as justification for further expansion.

The Founding Fathers designed the Constitution with profound skepticism about concentrated power, informed by classical wisdom and bitter experience with tyranny. They envisioned a limited government—constrained by law and confined to its proper sphere—not an absence of one.

Warren’s rhetorical trick highlights progressive economic dogma: Successful Americans owe their achievements to government “investment.” This myth crumbles upon inspection.

When progressives invoke roads, schools, and infrastructure, they conveniently ignore that these represent a minuscule fraction of federal spending. They could slash the federal budget in half without touching these basic functions.

Increased government spending has demonstrably failed to improve the very services Warren champions. After doubling per-pupil spending over four decades, K–12 outcomes have remained essentially unchanged. Yet homeschooled students consistently outperform their government-schooled peers, scoring higher on standardized tests and graduating from college at superior rates.

Consider electricity—another government “service” that Warren claims deserves our gratitude. What we have are private utilities, shielded from competition, that manipulate contracts and pour revenue into political campaigns.

“Who will build the roads?” This canard deserves particular scorn. Throughout American history, private enterprise has built superior transportation infrastructure. Between 1792 and 1845, over 2,000 private companies financed, built, and operated toll roads. Americans built more than 10,000 miles of private turnpikes—an effort that exceeded the post-World War II interstate system.

With the nation’s highest gas taxes, California ranks among the worst states in infrastructure quality. Despite collecting vast sums through fuel taxes, Golden State roads receive failing grades, while tax revenue is diverted to subsidize public transit and social programs, rather than road maintenance.

Art subsidies may be the most grotesque example of misallocated resources. The federal government funnels billions of dollars annually to “the arts.” Spending $206,000 on monkey puppet shows is but one example. Private benefactors, meanwhile, contribute significantly more to the art scene—at no cost to taxpayers.

Higher marginal tax rates—the favored tool of progressives to “pay for civilization” —systematically discourage productivity. When facing confiscatory tax rates on additional earnings, rational actors choose leisure over work, thereby reducing overall economic output.

The crucial distinction progressives refuse to acknowledge? While legitimate governmental functions may exist, the current crop of political operators has proven spectacularly incompetent at providing them.

Since 1960, state budgets have averaged double-digit growth, yet they have delivered steadily deteriorating results. The federal government commands a larger percentage of GDP than at any time except World War II, yet basic infrastructure crumbles.

Democrats and Republicans alike demonstrate an inability to do anything except support government expansion, collaborating to give us costly wars, a disastrous “healthcare” situation, and bailouts to only the well-connected. Nevertheless, taxpayers are still treated like ATMs.

The Old Right understood this distinction. It supported robust defense and limited domestic government, not the managerial state we suffer today. The containment doctrine—favoring “independent centers of power” over centralized control—reflected conservative wisdom about preserving diversity against the tyranny of homogeneity.

The solution does not require, as anarchists demand, the elimination of government. Nor is the progressive preference to expand bureaucracy a viable answer.

Instead? Consider the Founders: a vision of government limited to core functions, run by capable administrators rather than ideological zealots.

Privatize utilities. End the education monopoly. Eliminate arts subsidies. Flatten taxes. Restore competitive markets.

Limit government to such functions—defense, courts, border security—where monopoly power may serve a purpose.

The state, properly constituted, secures liberty. Current operators threaten that. Forgotten Americans understand the difference, even when the elites do not.

The hour is growing late to decide between the republic of the Founders and the modern, progressive administrative state. Choose wisely. There might not be another chance.

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