FDR’s Second Bill of Rights

Posted on June 18, 2004 in Class

Our greatest president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, had a vision which formed the basis for the achievements of the Greatest Generation and the sweeping civil rights reforms of the sixties and seventies. This path to American wealth depended on our adoption of a Second Bill of Rights which he enumerated in his last State of the Union address:

1. the right to a useful and remumerative job in industries or shops or farms of mines of the nation;
2. the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
3. the right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
4. the right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
5. the right of every family to a decent home;
6. the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
7. the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
8. the right to a good education

the Right has been striving to tear down with its Straussian lies and obfuscations ever since Reagan rode into office on the back of Iranian terrorists. With Reagan’s rise, the interests of the wealthy — those who are richer than the rich — became more important. Step by step, they have taken down the institutions which enabled our fathers and grandfathers to excell in all fields of endeavor and sold them overseas. Through the Republican repudiation of the Roosevelt doctrine, we have seen our country begin down the path which brought down another great Western Hemisphere nation, Argentina. The burden of carrying government has fallen on the shoulders of those who have worked the hardest to make America what it is today: the working and middle classes. In the meantime, the super-rich — the monopolists — live in an environment unfettered by government regulation and oversight. We the working and middle classes often hear about the importance of loyalty to this class which throws out parsimonies in the way of wages, insurance, and retirement benefits. We watch helplessly as they fleece small investors and retreat to luxorious homes, not feeling the losses they wreak in their relentless drive to control every material aspect of our lives — from the water we drive to the roads we drive on to the soldiers who fight our wars.

These men destroy good government — government of the people, by the people, and for the people — and replace it with bad government — government of lies and narrow self interest. Good government does not hold self-interest to be bad: as Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights affirms, it seeks to promote broad self-interest — profit that is shared by more than a few CEOs lucky enough to win golden parachutes or dynastic scions fortunate enough to have their souls emplaced in bodies sired by the super-rich and the wickedly elite.

When Roosevelt explicated this new Bill of Rights, he did not strive to add it to the constitution. Instead, through the Supreme Court and the houses of Congress, he sought to realize it through the document we already had. Indeed, the Supreme Court took the view — in Griffin vs. Illinois — that

a law nondiscrimatory on its face may be grossly discriminatory in its operation….In criminal trials a State can no more discriminate on account of poverty than on account of religion, race, or color.

This answered Anatole France’s sarcasm about the magestic equality of the law which “forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges to beg in the streets and to steal bread”. It spoke to the needs of every American. It ensured a Right to Life through Reasonable Livelihood for all.

The dirty secret of the Right with all its talk of “freedom” is this: they want to return to France’s nightmare. They want to solve social problems through imprisonment, through the creation of more wealth for themselves while denying it to you. They want a government which monitors you day and night so that you are not tempted to speak out against it. They want to control your access to education, medical care, and other government-sponsored factors so that you remain ignorant and incapable of gainsaying their oligarchic rule. They will even go to the point of rigging elections and using troops and police to prevent you from protest, from observation of their tactics behind closed doors. They want to impoverish you through private taxes such as hidden profit margins and privitization schemes which deliver basic services at a higher cost than good government can.

You did not elect these despots: you cannot throw them out of office, but you can throw the current batch of incumbents out. You can stand prepared to take back your nation. The only thing this country needs are candidates courageous enough to carry out Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s vision and a people not easily seduced by prime time television and a corporate media monopoly.

Roosevelt, our greatest president, saw the importance of conserving our people as our greatest natural resource. Reagan and his Republican successors — our worst presidents — have all but completely reversed this strengthening trend. Behind Reagan’s kind face, they sold our commons which we have held since the dawn of the Republic to a few. Now the best of us, the most compassionate and patriotic of us look for a leader: the man or the woman who will restore to us our Second Bill of Rights. That executive will be the greatest president this country has ever had, a genuine miracle-worker and a saint.

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For more on Roosevelt’s Second Bill of Rights, see the July 2004 issue of Harper’s, now on the newstands.