It was politically brilliant of FDR's speech writers to use the language of "rights" (which until that time in American liberty-oriented, revolutionary language had referred to rights granted by God to individual humans in opposition to government power) to the "right," or even the duty, of government to take the fruits of our efforts and that of our parents, without any apparent limit.
With a devilishly clever twisting of "freedom" language, leveraged with the timely intervention of the Great Depression, FDR decided to turn a charitable US with Christian values into a welfare state with a strong dose of secular socialist values. He had plenty of other choices.
I recently ran into an essay by Cass Sunstein in The American Prospect on FDR's "Second Bill of Rights."
A quote:
Roosevelt said that the nation "cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people--whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth--is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure." Roosevelt looked back, and not entirely approvingly, to the framing of the Constitution. At its inception, the nation had grown "under the protection of certain inalienable political rights--among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures."
But, he added, over time, "we have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence." As Roosevelt saw it, "necessitous men are not free men," not least because those who are hungry and jobless "are the stuff out of which dictatorships are made." He echoed the words of the Declaration of Independence, urging a kind of Declaration of Interdependence: "In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, 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."
Sunstein approves of FDR's revolution. Read the whole thing.
Comment from The Barrister: We cannot rest until one insecure family is made secure? What does that mean? My life would be instantly insecure if I decided to quit work today, grab a six-pack and go fishin.'
Comment from Bird Dog: To imagine that FDR and his pals were indifferent to the laws of incentive and of unintended consequences would be to underestimate them. Since I do not believe that it is possilble to be charitable with other people's money, I assume that they were simply very crafty politicians. The Dems have never wavered from that same strategy: the more people you put on the dole and the fewer folks you have paying all of the taxes, the more votes you get. It's not complicated. Hence the moves for socialized medicine...and then what next, after that?
Comment from Dr. Bliss: As an aristocrat in a family with a strong sense of noblesse oblige, FDR never had to worry about freedom. Freedom never entered into his administration's equations, and the Progressives back then had as little interest in struggling with the conflicts between individual freedom and autonomy vs. material social well-being, as they do today.
