Tag: FDR

In the present fraught moment -- with the Democrats hesitating in dealing with by far the most impeachable President America has ever had --...

See below for video and transcribed highlights from Del. Mark Levine (D-Alexandria/Arlington)'s kickoff last weekend, in which he argued that the upcoming 2020 elections...

This piece is running in newspapers in my very red congressional district (VA-06). ***************************** There’s much about how the world has changed in my lifetime for...

by Karen Duncan After the disheartening loss in GA 06, I've heard a lot of the arguments about why the Democrats should go back to...

Here's my subjective ranking of the legitimacy of U.S. presidential elections since 1932 on a scale of 0 (not legitimate at all) to 10...

(This is the second installment of a discussion begun here.) The first installment of this two-part article argued that the election of Donald Trump demonstrates...

This piece is appearing in newspapers in my conservative congressional district (VA-06), headed by the preface that "This piece is appearing on various liberal...

Dear Senator Kaine, I hope you don't mind my taking the liberty to address this to you. I do so for three reasons: First, the...

That quote comes from FDR's "Simple Truths" speech to Congress in April 1938. It's as true today as it was 73 years ago.

FDR also said in that speech that "the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living...Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing."

Some things never change, huh? I just wish we'd hear Democrats speaking like that today, and not being afraid to tell the truth to the American people, as FDR did in much worse times.

I cannot understand why some progressives and liberals engage so frequently nowadays in hand wringing and fussing about how President Obama isn't "liberal enough." People, please take note. Progressives and liberals won all the big battles in the 20th century over whether America was going to become a moderate nation with a social safety net or one that followed the aggressively selfish philosophy of someone like Ayn Rand and her ilk. That war is over. We won. Now, we just have to be sure we don't lose the "peace" by allowing what passes for conservatism today (actually, it's reactionary and extremely dangerous to our representative democracy) to divide us and conquer us all.

President Obama never was a leftist politician. He never pretended to be. He is a centrist or at best a center-left pragmatist who understands that getting half a loaf in the poisonous atmosphere in Washington today is far better than going for it all and losing it all. We also need to understand that this nation is, at best, a centrist country, with a tendency to lean to the conservative side unless self interest makes us want the federal government to save us from something. The good thing is that a majority of Americans support the social safety net and the programs given to us by those who have gone before, giants like Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Lyndon B. Johnson.

If you like knowing that someone has inspected the meat you are going to feed your children, thank TR. You also can thank him for the Pure Food and Drug Act, which banned food and drugs that are impure or falsely labeled from being made, sold, and shipped.