uncanny

I was thinking ...

If you weren't one to recognize the dated verbage, would you be able to tell the two of these "lists" apart? One is from the January 11th, 1944 SoTU address by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The other is Occupy Wall Street's unofficial (they've yet to have their "General Assembly" - I know, wtf? - vote on it, but it's been submitted) list of "demands."

For your reading pleasure:

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

Demand four: Free college education.

Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.

Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy.

*****

"It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We 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.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, 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. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

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.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

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;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America's own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens.

For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world."

WOW! Those are shockingly similar. And look at what FDR was advocating. Are we to believe that the ideology which produced this address was somehow NOT the ideology behind New Deal policy? How could policies birthed of this radical ideology succeed? You know these sort of societal "guarantees" do not work.

Titus, if any other man, and I mean ANY other man were to say these things - let alone say them to the nation as a sitting president in a SoTU address - you would call him an out and out socialist. At the very least you would say he embodies an ideology that history has proven is doomed to fail, no matter the reason or crisis presented as justification for their attempt. Yet you describe the policy agenda which such an ideology, such a man, yielded as a "success" in bringing about economic recovery between 1933-1941. I find that stunning.

By the by, I seem to recall - when trying to differentiate FDR from Obama - the following from your post entitled "Just one more."

"He proposed the "second bill of rights" in 1944 to further guarantee the economic and fiscal equality of all Americans as they conducted their lives and followed the "pursuit of happiness"... but he didn't ever suggest that the Constitution was "flawed"..."

Really? Read that intro to the second bill of rights again. Maybe it's just me but I tend to read "inadequate", and the general tone he was setting there, as flawed. And you wrote that this bill of rights was simply to "further guarantee the economic equality of all Americans as they conducted their lives..." ? YOU wrote that, it wasn't a quote from this address. Dammit man, THERE IS NO SUCH GUARANTEE! THINK about what you're defending. THINK about this SOTU ... how is this sentiment any different than Obama's? Are you kidding? It's different only in that Obama doesn't have the balls, as PoTUS, to flat out say the Constitution isn't up to the job, name a list of things that would be, then go about enacting policies and attempting to pack courts to see those policies through. FDR disagreed with this nation's charter as founded, period. HE SAID SO. He wanted to "progress past", (hello, progressive) the Constitution in every measurable way. In fact, his list damn near looks like the Soviet Constitution! Can you imagine what the post-war boom would have looked like had he lived and had a chance to further implent this second bill of rights? My God, it takes your breath away.

Flawed, inadequate, not up to the task, a charter of negative liberties ... it's all the same. They are the same. Yet one gets the Titus thumbs up, and one doesn't. Well, I think I know what your thumb's up these days (kidding). Just yield already, at least on this point - Obama and FDR are cut from the same ideological, wealth redistributionist, planned economy, high tax, the Constitution isn't up to the crisis we face, CLOTH.