PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT: "THE ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS"
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“The Economic Bill of Rights”
Excerpt from President Roosevelt's January 11, 1944 message to the Congress of the United States on the State of the Union
"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.
AmericaÂ’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.
Source: The Public Papers & Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt (Samuel Rosenman, ed.), Vol XIII (NY: Harper, 1950), 40-42
Franklin D. Roosevelt - American Heritage Center, Inc."<!-- google_ad_section_end -->
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Roosevelt's words convey as much meaning as they did when first uttered,
and they are as timely today as they were then.
Ugh. Well, this is going to be a long post, so bear with me if you will.
First, what if every one of FDR's proposed rights said something along the lines of "Citizens will...", ie.
"Citizens will be employed in useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation" or,
"Citizens will earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation".
Doesn't sound quite as nice, does it? But doesn't it stand to reason that a contract might end up running both ways?
I think you have to go all the way back to John Locke and earlier philosophers who explored
natural law in an effort to understand "unalienable rights". In a nutshell though, our "unalienable rights" are self-fruitful in that they stem from our condition as human beings.
Dogs are dogs and behave as dogs; monkeys are monkeys and behave as monkeys; humans are humans and behave as humans. We are capable of speech, therefore we have a right to speak. We can make tools, build homes, and defend those homes, therefore we have a right to our property. This might suggest to you that ANY behavior we might find prevalent in human beings would be acceptable. ie. We can steal from our neighbor, therefore we have a right to. But no. The concept involves EACH person as having the same and equal rights, so in the exercise of our own unalienable rights, we are not free to abrogate or interfere in another individual's.
The ultimate reasoning behind having laws to begin with is to create a peaceful society. What we learn in the study of
natural rights is that there's a predictable negative reaction when these rights are not respected. IOW, if your neighbor steals from you, and you have no law to protect you, tumult and chaos become predictable. It's not human nature to simply allow such insult to pass. Your "right" to your own property has been abrogated, and chances are high that you'll seek to right that wrong.
Of course, our Founders had studied such philosophies; they were well-read men. And in designing the freest society they could imagine, prescient in their understanding that times would change but the nature of man would not... they chose to RESTRAIN government rather than citizens. They understood that even though human beings typically choose social constructs; nations, tribes, clans, families... trouble ensues when the rights of INDIVIDUALS are obstructed.
When you look at FDR's proposal, it's easy to see that it would be impossible to refrain from the abuse of individuals. Some people won't want that "right to a job" or "right to a home". Do you MAKE them accept it? And even if you don't, NONE of these proposed rights can be described as "self-fruitful". We can't do our own heart surgery. We can't always teach ourselves all the skills we need. These things depend upon the resources of others.
Let's take one example to it's extreme-most conclusion, just as a thought exercise...
Let's say that the government has guaranteed each citizen a "right" to healthcare. And let's further say that the field of medicine is no longer profitable and no longer appealing to students. We've imported as many doctors and nurses as we can, we've put as many incentives on the study of medicine as possible. There are not enough and we can't get any more. What happens next?
It's a "right". It MUST be provided. And because it MUST be provided, the only thing left to do is to conscript one citizen to serve another. And in so doing, we have abrogated that citizen's
natural rights. We have made him a slave.
You might say that this is not so different from drafting soldiers. But bear in mind that we
don't draft soldiers anymore. Military conscription has always been controversial, because as discussed earlier, it
does abrogate natural rights, and thus results in predictable tumult.
At the bottom line, FDR's system of
positive rights cannot be accomplished without abrogating the
unalienable rights we've become accustomed to. You can have one system or the other, but not both. They cancel one another out. If we were to adopt FDR's
Second Bill of Rights, we become dependent upon the political class to treat us fairly, as it is
they who will be distributing our wealth, talents, and property, and no longer we ourselves.
