I wanted to spread the word about a brilliant website I found in a local newsletter. What originally drew to my attention was the site’s informative and inspiring piece about Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and the first woman appointed to a cabinet position. It moved me deeply, because her vision of the New Deal and what it strove for is the opposite of the vision that the current GOP is trying to blind us with — because to share their vision, we, the American people, would truly have to be blind. The GOP “vision” (agenda is a better word) is the spawn of the unholy but natural union between Ayn Rand’s philosophy and the sick, hateful economics of segregationist James McGill Buchanan. A greed so bottomless that it literally swallows the planet and all living things into its poisonous maw, shits it all out the other end, and will still never be satisfied.
On the side of the angels is the New Deal, which was our attempt as a nation to embody our democracy in the best way, and in doing so, made use of all the qualities that we, as Americans, like to believe we possess as our national character traits: generosity, equality, diversity, innovation, endless optimism and a faith in the ultimate goodness of humanity. In other words, all the values that are being challenged every second by the filth the Republicans have exploited our worst qualities (gullibility, mental laziness, religious superstitiousness, isolationist xenophobia) to foist on us.
The Living New Deal strives to inform people not only about all the material successes that New Deal achieved, but about the essential intelligence and kindness that motivated them.
We’re still fighting the good fight.