I’ve been wanting to write a post about my perspective on the current state of things in the US. But doing that has seemed like a rather insignificant gesture in the face of all that is cascading down around our ears.
And then Selma brought up an FDR quote in a comment she recently left, and so I wanted to look the quote up. And I found that the famous quote she referred to “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself” came from FDR’s inaugural address in 1933. Another rather inauspicious time in the US.
I had never read the text of this speech and so I did just now. And I found it pretty inspiring. And I realized that what I had to say about what was going on in the US now, couldn’t really be said much better than what I read in FDR’s speech.
Full disclosure? I think we’re headed down a misguided path by funneling more money into banking and failing multinationals.
I think that providing health care to every single citizen of this nation should be our first priority.
We want to free up innovation? We want people to go out there and champion new ideas for a greener world? We want business to be able to be profitable and pay their employees well?
Well, how about we provide health care to everyone so folks can stop working jobs solely because they need medical coverage and can choose to do the work they feel might really help the world. How about we provide medical coverage so that business is freed from that expense, and can focus on their actual business. How about we make it so the ability to get your teeth fixed and your bones set stops being a class privilege.
Yes, it will be expensive. Yes, taxes will go up. But, we’ll actually get something in return. Folks will be able to take their kids to the doctor when they are sick; they’ll be able to take themselves to the doctor for that annual physical they last had the cash for in 1992.
All of the banking and other corporate bailouts are mortgaging our futures to the tune of numbers I can’t even conceptualize, with little hope, and no promise of returning much of anything. Except more of the same things that got us here in the first place.
I think FDR said it much better than I ever could hope to.
…We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for…Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish…
…The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit…
…Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing…
…Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
[excerpting and emphasis mine]
You can read the full text of FDR’s speech here. And if you are interested some intelligent alternative view points on the bailout etc., my friend Lucio has put together an ever expanding series of excellent articles here.
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9 Comments »
(what is this?)
March 31, 2009 - 3:57 pm - GMT
for everyone ’till then!
