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In reply to the discussion: This is what a REAL Democrat sounds like. [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)169. For those who don't know why FDR was a Real Democrat...
Freedom of speech
Freedom of worship
Freedom from want
Freedom from fear
The Four Freedoms Center
The Four Freedoms Center develops bold ideas that are beyond the narrow parameters of the current political debate. They form the foundation of a New Deal for the 21st century.
A Compelling Vision for the Future
As FDR taught us, ideas matter. Powerful ideas about how our government and economy work have helped the conservative movement define the agenda of American politics for 30 years. But the conservative vision has led to a country out of balance, with radical inequality, deep insecurity, and threats to basic rights.
To win America back, progressives need clear and convincing narratives and paradigms around which to organize. Bold ideas and a compelling vision for the future grounded in evidence, articulated in policy, and moved up and out into the world can create the kind of common knowledge that shapes the next political era.
Big Ideas
The Four Freedoms Centers ideas confront conservative dogma without hesitation. We don't think government threatens markets, but that our economy grows and we all do better when a healthy government supports healthy markets. This concept draws on the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist and Senior Fellow Joseph Stiglitz and Senior Fellow Rob Johnson, former Senate Banking Committee chief economist.
Stiglitz, Johnson, and others helped establish the Four Freedoms Center in 2009 as a leading source of ideas and rigorous analysis of the financial crisis. Its Make Markets Be Markets conference set the outlines for the reforms passed in 2010. The Center also worked closely with Elizabeth Warren on conceptualizing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Big Initiatives
This initial work established a theme: Roosevelt takes on the biggest challenges that will change the country in fundamental ways:
The structure of the American economy, and how we create value
The role of government, and how we can rebuild an active government in which we all participate fully as citizens
The U.S. role in the world, and how we can all thrive in an increasingly globalized economy
The major initiatives of the Four Freedoms Center, led by our Fellows, focus on what FDR called the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy.
The Next American Economy, led by Bowman Cutter, examines the emerging trends that will define our economy over the next decade and beyond through a series of high-level meetings and publications.
The Future of Work, led by Dorian Warren and Annette Bernhardt, seeks to ensure a strong middle class.
Women and Girls Rising, led by Ellen Chesler, aims to demonstrate how expanding rights and opportunities for women advance global prosperity.
New Voices
The Four Freedoms Center Fellows are the rare individuals who connect ideas to public life. On television, in major publications, in the conversation with activists on the Internet, and in partnership with advocacy organizations and community organizers, they provide the tools and arguments for change.
On reform of the tax system, Mike Konczal has been putting forward both breakthrough proposals and a broad defense of progressive taxation. On reform of the political process, including reducing the power of economic inequality over democracy, Fellows including Thomas Ferguson and Richard Kirsch have been illuminating the problem and crafting new solutions. Sabeel Rahman works on progressive values, and Georgia Levenson Keohane connects those values to poverty alleviation. And Stiglitz, Johnson, and Konczal continue to drive issues of financial reform focusing, as the crisis evolves, on the mortgage overhang, student debt, and the increasingly significant problem of municipal finance. All this work is grounded in accurate historical perspective by our Hyde Park-based Fellow David Woolner.
SOURCE: http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org/
That's from a current day Foundation dedicated to instituting real Democratic action.
Sounds like a completely different world than today? Yeah, it is. These are Trickle Down times when Banksters, Warmongers and Traitors get ahead.
FDR used government to make life better for ALL Americans. That's Democratic.
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*sigh* most DU'er bleating about the Third Wayer Corporatist Authoritarians would have hated FDR
KittyWampus
Dec 2014
#7
With very few exceptions, the "left" of today in the US bears utterly no similarity to the
JDPriestly
Dec 2014
#93
Even Eleanor said she'd be inclined to support Wallace if FDR wasn't running nt
dflprincess
Dec 2014
#149
Hunt never said the CIA has literally controlled every President from LBJ to Obama.
merrily
Dec 2014
#148
Post that on a Communist board. Most of America, esp traditional Dems, revered him.
merrily
Dec 2014
#167
I've got to say I am a bit sick of this false characterization that he "sponsors the TPP."
MADem
Dec 2014
#101
Thank you for your post, MADem.. President Obama is the punching bag. .facts be damned.
Cha
Dec 2014
#125
If people are demanding no criticism against Obama here, they aren't at all successful.
MADem
Dec 2014
#180
And he didn't let that stop him from providing for the people who elected him. In fact
sabrina 1
Dec 2014
#3
His own class made a FORTUNE off of WW2, that more than compensated for the taxes they paid in
MADem
Dec 2014
#18
They're not friends of yours? I was referring to President Obama who when asked about the
sabrina 1
Dec 2014
#27
Don't ask me those questions, I despise Reagan. Ask Obama why he admired him so much.
sabrina 1
Dec 2014
#36
That book was written in 1980 and is often quoted by conservatives to tear Carter down.
MADem
Dec 2014
#138
FDR did not integrate anything because Party loyalty and "pragmatism" directed those actions.
merrily
Dec 2014
#132
I doubt you--or anyone here -- would be "meh" -ing if GW Bush tried to pack the court
MADem
Dec 2014
#153
As long as we're doing hypotheticals, I doubt everyone here would be upset if Obama did it.
merrily
Dec 2014
#154
He never tried it? It's in the history books! He most certainly "tried" it--otherwise,
MADem
Dec 2014
#158
As I said twice before, we know he threatened and we know it never happened. All else is
merrily
Dec 2014
#159
I'm not speculating about anything. If he didn't try it, it wouldn't have been recorded in history
MADem
Dec 2014
#161
The reality of FDR is he was chastised by the Far Left and many DU'ers would have called him
KittyWampus
Dec 2014
#8
FDR's social programs have saved millions of lives. Since then every greedy, Wall St crook has tried
sabrina 1
Dec 2014
#37
Where is anyone in this thread declaring "FDR's social programs DID NOT SAVE any lives?"
MADem
Dec 2014
#42
Who's doing that? Not me. I am a pragmatist. I see the man as he was, warts and all.
MADem
Dec 2014
#22
Could you please show me where the OP is trying to get us to believe that FDR was perfect?
Luminous Animal
Dec 2014
#50
And the Civil Rights Act and Nixon's Southern Strategy were the reasons we lost it.
MADem
Dec 2014
#56
That's the very point! No one can know--it's an exercise in an Unprovable Thesis. nt
MADem
Dec 2014
#58
My grandfather was a black man born in the late 1800's who was an FDR man
TheKentuckian
Dec 2014
#74
Lucky him. Not sure who you are accusing of "generaliz(ing) to lie" but that sounds pretty uncivil
MADem
Dec 2014
#78
Who, would you say, are the ideological equivalents of Frances Perkins and Henry Wallace
MannyGoldstein
Dec 2014
#51
Those kinds of comparisons are pointless. It's not 1933 and we're not in the midst of a Great
MADem
Dec 2014
#52
You may be right in some respects, but most of us who criticize Obama do not hate him.
JDPriestly
Dec 2014
#109
He understands that "living to fight another day" is more important than blowing one's powder all
MADem
Dec 2014
#116
A corporatist hated by The Corporatists, who vilified him to the point than many simply referred to.
LanternWaste
Dec 2014
#135
Warren was nurtured on the same New Deal Policies that most of my generation benefited from
whathehell
Dec 2014
#72
You'd probably have called him sell-out & rejected Social Security cause it didn't cover everybody
KittyWampus
Dec 2014
#6
Really? FDR fully explained his plans for SS AND he had a tendency to ACT FAST on
sabrina 1
Dec 2014
#39
"I doubt eg FDR would be pushing the TPP ..." Who knows but he did push for lower tariffs, the IMF,
pampango
Dec 2014
#48
The Democratic Party became a liberal party largely through the "New Deal" policies of FDR
RiverLover
Dec 2014
#21
You know who down plays and disparages FDR and hates liberals? Far right Republicans
TheKentuckian
Dec 2014
#25
Conservatives have tried to make liberal a dirty word, but there are those of us who have refused
liberal_at_heart
Dec 2014
#111
Eleanor was the real "true" Democrat, probably the most "real" Democrat
mountain grammy
Dec 2014
#73
Before that, he was too busy saving the US while fighting the SCOTUS, Congress, and Hitler and
merrily
Dec 2014
#130
Yes, FDR got the SCOTUS to do what he wanted without packing it. That was the genius of it.
merrily
Dec 2014
#182
So it's not a cancer claim because you could have meant something else
Progressive dog
Jan 2015
#188
Whatever, dude. You don't like my replies, don't keep posting to me on a thread from Dec 5, 2014.
merrily
Jan 2015
#189
"Fuck the corporatists and their enablers." Boy you sure pissed off some 'liberals' with those words
Rex
Dec 2014
#83
Well they pretended there was a purge, then they pretended everyone here wanted purity.
Rex
Dec 2014
#122
It would have, if so many leftists hadn't been banned or didn't give up. As it is, it's over 100.
merrily
Dec 2014
#128
Yep. I still remember the gist of Katie Couric's intro to showing the clip at about 7 am
merrily
Dec 2014
#129
Love to see the dude dressed in a tuxedo for the occasion of a radio address, hahaha!
beerandjesus
Dec 2014
#133