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FDR on Populism VS Unchecked capitalism. (Thanks to Two Americas)

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Dawggie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 09:17 PM
Original message
FDR on Populism VS Unchecked capitalism. (Thanks to Two Americas)
Edited on Thu Jan-10-08 09:42 PM by Dawggie
Original post here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2641270&mesg_id=2654393

Do we have the courage to face the truth? Or will we settle for "hoping" for "change?"

Read his words. Compare them to where the Democratic party is today.

Excerpted from a speech by FDR from 1936:

That very word freedom, in itself and of necessity, suggests freedom from some restraining power. In 1776 we sought freedom from the tyranny of a political autocracy—from the eighteenth century royalists who held special privileges from the crown. It was to perpetuate their privilege that they governed without the consent of the governed; that they denied the right of free assembly and free speech; that they restricted the worship of God; that they put the average man's property and the average man's life in pawn to the mercenaries of dynastic power; that they regimented the people.

And so it was to win freedom from the tyranny of political autocracy that the American Revolution was fought. That victory gave the business of governing into the hands of the average man, who won the right with his neighbors to make and order his own destiny through his own Government. Political tyranny was wiped out at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.

Since that struggle, however, man's inventive genius released new forces in our land which reordered the lives of our people.. The age of machinery, of railroads; of steam and electricity; the telegraph and the radio; mass production, mass distribution—all of these combined to bring forward a new civilization and with it a new problem for those who sought to remain free.

For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital—all undreamed of by the fathers—the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.

The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor—these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small business man, the investments set aside for old age—other people's money—these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.

Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities.

Throughout the Nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.

An old English judge once said: "Necessitous men are not free men." Liberty requires opportunity to make a living—a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor—other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of Government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the Government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the Government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the Government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.

The brave and clear platform adopted by this Convention, to which I heartily subscribe, sets forth that Government in a modern civilization has certain inescapable obligations to its citizens, among which are protection of the family and the home, the establishment of a democracy of opportunity, and aid to those overtaken by disaster.

But the resolute enemy within our gates is ever ready to beat down our words unless in greater courage we will fight for them.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Acceptance Speech for the Renomination for the Presidency, Philadelphia, Pa.
June 27th, 1936
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rockymountaindem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 09:20 PM
Response to Original message
1. Kick for the greatest President ever n/t
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Dawggie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 09:23 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Thanks. Here's some scary stuff...
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midlife_mo_Jo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-11-08 06:10 PM
Response to Reply #1
25. Also k&R
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terisan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 09:23 PM
Response to Original message
3. Now there is a president-fighter fighting for rights!
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Fed_Up_Grammy Donating Member (923 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 09:31 PM
Response to Original message
4.  Didn't he live a luxurious life on inherited money? I hate
lectures about equality given by someone who never ,ever had to worry about paying bills.

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Thothmes Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 09:38 PM
Response to Reply #4
6. Name the last President of the United States
that supported themselves with an hourly wage pay check as an adult?
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Fed_Up_Grammy Donating Member (923 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-11-08 06:05 PM
Response to Reply #6
24. HST
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terisan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 10:11 PM
Response to Reply #4
12. I prefer a rich man who works for poor people to a rich man who represents only rich people.
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terisan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 10:11 PM
Response to Reply #12
13. Adult life must have been great in that wheelchair. nt
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Dawggie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 10:19 PM
Response to Reply #13
15. Zing!
:)
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Dawggie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-11-08 12:13 AM
Response to Reply #12
17. That works for me!
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terisan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 10:15 PM
Response to Reply #4
14. uh he lived it a wheelchair, and one without power at that. I prefer use of my legs to $1,000,000
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Dawggie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 11:44 PM
Response to Reply #14
16. Yeah, And I would think that just about al of us would
Ever been to his "white House" in GA?
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Selatius Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-11-08 01:39 AM
Response to Reply #4
21. So you would rather a rich man use his wealth to destroy you than to help you?
Talk about ignorance. You have forgotten what your parents and grandparents learned the hard way during the Depression, and that is your loss.
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OHdem10 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 09:36 PM
Response to Original message
5. People seem to forget that FDR had to fight. The GOP Business
and Corporate, industrialists Republicans hated Roosevelt so much
they could not utter his name. "That man in the White House" is
how they referenced him.

A courageous fighter he was.

Never forget, FDR saved Capitalism and Democracy.
Yes Capitalism failed in the Great Depression and FDR saved our system
and leading in WWII saved Democracy.
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Dawggie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 09:42 PM
Response to Reply #5
7. And Smedley Butler may have saved FDR...
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EVDebs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 09:48 PM
Response to Reply #5
9. A recent article on Edwards in the NYTimes was "The Long Haul"
Edwards is in this till past the convention if need be IMHO. Obama met with Bloomberg on Nov 30, 2007. Wonder what that was all about, huh ? Corporate interests want to sandbag any progressive chance.
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Elspeth Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 09:44 PM
Response to Original message
8. He could never win with this speech today
Half the people wouldn't have a fucking clue what he was talking about.
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EVDebs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 09:49 PM
Response to Reply #8
10. ...and the other half just don't got to the polls and vote anyway. nt
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Dawggie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jan-10-08 09:54 PM
Response to Reply #8
11. Naw... The Chamber of Commerce would have him killed.
Sad, but I believe it.
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Dawggie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-11-08 01:26 AM
Response to Original message
18. Lonesome kick because this is better than anything I could have ever written. READ IT!
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leftofthedial Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-11-08 01:31 AM
Response to Original message
19. Kucinich is only one saying anything remotely like this.
:shrug:

this country has moved so far to the right that we can't even see any part of the left anymore.
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dweller Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-11-08 02:07 AM
Response to Reply #19
23. ...
:kick:

since you got it.

another :kick: that you said it.
dp
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Selatius Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-11-08 01:35 AM
Response to Original message
20. Any front-running Democrat who would give such a speech would be condemned as being extremist today.
Edited on Fri Jan-11-08 01:35 AM by Selatius
FDR was called a traitor to his class for calling for higher tax rates for the wealthy, even though FDR himself was wealthy.
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Dawggie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-11-08 01:42 AM
Response to Reply #20
22. Someone needs to mail this to Keith and every congressman they can find.
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