"Obama Should Look To Roosevelt In Fight Against Inequality, Right Wing"
Seventy years ago, on January 11, 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his 11th Annual Message on the State of the Union. The United States was at war. But the president spoke not only of the struggle and of what Americans had to do to hasten victory over the Axis Powers. He also spoke of what Americans needed to do to win the peace to come. Reaffirming his administration’s commitment to the vision he had articulated in his 1941 Annual Message – the vision of the Four Freedoms: Freedom of speech, Freedom of worship, Freedom from want, Freedom from fear – Roosevelt now called for an Economic Bill of Rights for all Americans.
As President Obama prepares his 2014 State of the Union address for delivery on January 28, with the question of his second-term legacy no doubt in mind and midterm elections on the near horizon, he would do well to attend to FDR’s 1944 Message. Our own challenges are not those of 1944. But in the wake of the tragedies, crises, painful obstructions, and compromises of the past 15 years, and in the face of continuing right-wing and corporate class war against working people, they are no less daunting – and we are no less eager to start addressing them.
Roosevelt also knew full well that Congress would never endorse an economic bill of rights. Dominated since 1938 by a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats, Congress had been doing everything it could to terminate the New Deal, limit the rights of workers and minorities, and block new liberal initiatives. And yet he had good reason to believe that most of his fellow citizens would embrace the idea. Polls showed that the vast majority of Americans saw the war in terms of the Four Freedoms, and understood the battles of not just the past three years, but the past 12 years, in terms of enhancing American democratic life. In fact, 94 percent of them endorsed old-age pensions; 84 percent, job insurance; 83 percent, national health insurance; 79 percent, aid for students; and 73 percent, work relief. Pollster Jerome Bruner would observe: “If a ‘plebiscite’ on Social Security were to be conducted tomorrow, America would make the plans of our Social Security prophets look niggardly. We want the whole works.”
“This Republic,” he said, “had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights… They were our rights to life and liberty. As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however – as our industrial economy expanded – these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.” But, he continued: “We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. ‘Necessitous men are not free men.’” And evoking Jefferson, the Founders, and Lincoln, he contended that “In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident,” and “We have accepted, so to speak, " target="_blank">a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.”
http://www.nationalmemo.com/obama-should-look-to-roosevelt-in-fight-against-inequality-right-wing/
Interesting to read about brakes on the New Deal imposed by Congress after 1938 though the concepts were still immensely popular with the public. Guess I thought that FDR had a supportive congress throughout his administration. He got a lot done from 1933 to 1938, but conservative forces limited his ability to promote an economic bill of rights after that.
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