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:..
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:..
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