On the 60th anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt's death, it is appropriate that we remember this great man and recall the contributions he made to this country and to the goals that liberals have championed for the past 70 years.
This tribute will be primarily through the words of FDR - words that lifted a nation at its greatest depths and that inspired it to military victory when its survival was at stake.
There was no greater president in the 20th century than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His rise to the political heights after he was afflicted with polio is an inspiring story of personal courage and sheer determination. But he is remembered today not because of his personal story but because of what he accomplished in his 12 years as president and, equally significantly, what he did to transform the spirit of the country from one of hopelessness to supreme confidence.
FDR's great optimism about this country was seen most famously in his First Inaugural Address when he declared:
This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.
While optimism is, of course, a hallmark of most presidential rhetoric, never had it seemed less justified than in 1933. The country's economy was in complete collapse. More than a quarter of the country was unemployed and most of the rest were underemployed. Businesses were collapsing, industrial production was non-existent, prices were declining, family farms were closing, and there was no sign of recovery.
Roosevelt began his presidency with a rush of recovery legislation known as "The Hundred Days," and more fittingly, "The New Deal." Without going into all of the legislation that FDR proposed during that first 100 days and over the course of his first term, a few are of such preeminent and permanent importance that they deserve mention - bank deposit insurance, the establishment of social security, the first federal minimum wage law, the creation of the federal securities laws and the Securities and Exchange Commission, farm price supports, federal work projects, and the lowering of onerous trade tariffs.
Roosevelt was an optimist but he was no pollyanna. He focused his energies on what needed to be done and he aimed his "righteous anger" at those who impeded these necessary actions - the economic, business, and political elites whose rigid policies and inaction had led to the national collapse. Perhaps no speech better expressed FDR's political and economic beliefs than his 1936 acceptance speech to the Democratic Convention:
For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital--all undreamed of by the fathers--the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.
There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.
It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.
The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor--these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small business man, the investments set aside for old age--other people's money--these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.
Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities.
Throughout the Nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.
Rather than control and domination by the powerful few, FDR's vision was broad, deep, and truly American:
We are poor indeed if this Nation cannot afford to lift from every recess of American life the dread fear of the unemployed that they are not needed in the world. We cannot afford to accumulate a deficit in the books of human fortitude.
In the place of the palace of privilege we seek to build a temple out of faith and hope and charity.
It is a sobering thing, my friends, to be a servant of this great cause. We try in our daily work to remember that the cause belongs not to us, but to the people. The standard is not in the hands of you and me alone. It is carried by America. We seek daily to profit from experience, to learn to do better as our task proceeds.
Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales.
Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Roosevelt had an almost mystical, even messianic, view of America's role in the world and its ability to act as an inspiration to the peoples of other countries, particularly those who lived in fascist or communist dictatorships.
There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
In this world of ours in other lands, there are some people, who, in times past, have lived and fought for freedom, and seem to have grown too weary to carry on the fight. They have sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living. They have yielded their democracy.
I believe in my heart that only our success can stir their ancient hope. They begin to know that here in America we are waging a great and successful war. It is not alone a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization. It is more than that; it is a war for the survival of democracy. We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.
Sooner than most Americans, Roosevelt saw the rise of Hitler and his fascist allies as a great danger to our country. Fighting an overwhelming and, at times, quite bitter and determined opposition, FDR slowly forced the country to face this threat and to begin to take the necessary steps to counter it. Between the time of Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939 and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Roosevelt oversaw the rearming of America. Our defense budget grew 2000% - an absolutely staggering statistic - we instituted the first peacetime draft, and we began providing critical assistance to Great Britain as it alone stood defiant against Hitler's sweeping conquests.
In one of his most famous pre-Pearl Harbor warnings to the American people, Roosevelt soberly discussed the dire implication to our country if Hitler should defeat Britain:
Does anyone seriously believe that we need to fear attack while a free Britain remains our most powerful naval neighbor in the Atlantic? Does any one seriously believe, on the other hand, that we could rest easy if the Axis powers were our neighbor there?
If Great Britain goes down, the Axis powers will control the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australasia, and the high seas--and they will be in a position to bring enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere. It is no exaggeration to say that all of us in the Americas would be living at the point of a gun--a gun loaded with explosive bullets, economic as well as military.
We should enter upon a new and terrible era in which the whole world, our hemisphere included, would be run by threats of brute force. To survive in such a world, we would have to convert ourselves permanently into a militaristic power on the basis of war economy. . . .
The experience of the past two years has proven beyond doubt that no nation can appease the Nazis. No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb. We know now that a nation can have peace with the Nazis only at the price of total surrender.
Roosevelt's prescription was clear.
We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice, as we would show were we at war. . . .
I have the profound conviction that the American people are now determined to put forth a mightier effort than they have ever yet made to increase our production of all the implements of defense, to meet the threat to our democratic faith.
As President of the United States I call for that national effort. I call for it in the name of this Nation which we love and honor and which we are privileged and proud to serve. I call upon our people with absolute confidence that our common cause will greatly succeed.
Following the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR summed up the spirit of the country in its united determination to defeat the Axis powers.
Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us.
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the act that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces--with the unbounding determination of our people--we will gain the inevitable triumph--so help us God.
Roosevelt skillfully directed the country's war effort and insisted on the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan (and the elimination of their fascist leadership). But he always kept his focus on the steps that would be needed to ensure that our victory was not followed by another world war as had been the case after the First World War. In this, FDR saw our great failing after 1918 as being our withdrawal from world affairs. He was determined not to repeat this mistake following the Second World War.
We are united in determination that this war shall not be followed by another interim which leads to new disaster- that we shall not repeat the tragic errors of ostrich isolationism--that we shall not repeat the excesses of the wild twenties when this Nation went for a joy ride on a roller coaster which ended in a tragic crash.
This was a theme that he returned to again and again - that America had to assume global responsibilities if it wished to avoid global war. In the words of his final speech to Congress on March 1, 1945:
Responsibility for political conditions thousands of miles away can no longer be avoided, I think, by this great nation. Certainly, I don't want to live to see another war. As I have said, the world is smaller--smaller every year. The United States now exerts a tremendous influence in the cause of peace.
What we people over here are thinking and talking about is in the interest of peace, because it's known all over the world. The slightest remark in either house of the Congress is known all over the world the following day. We will continue to exert that influence only if we are willing to continue to share in the responsibility for keeping the peace. It would be our own tragic loss if we were to shirk that responsibility.
Now to be clear, Roosevelt was far from a perfect human being and his administration was certainly far from perfect. His decision to intern Japanese-Americans following Pearl Harbor was shameful and a major blight on his record. Civil rights progress moved at a snail's pace under FDR despite the pleadings of his courageous wife and so many others. Our armed forces maintained their hateful segregation policy despite numerous and often passionate and vocal pleadings from the black community. And, for all the confidence building measures implemented by Roosevelt, the plain fact is that the country's economy did not significantly improve until we began massively rearming after 1939.
But all of that does not dim the greatness of Franklin Roosevelt. Perhaps the best way to measure any president is to compare the country's condition before he assumed office to the condition that his successor found. By that standard, FDR stands with Washington and Lincoln as the greatest of American presidents.
On the 60th anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt's death, I'd like to conclude with the memorial tribute to FDR by his great wartime comrade Winston Churchill:
He had brought his country through the worst of its perils and the heaviest of its toils. Victory had cast its sure and steady beam upon him. He had broadened and stabilised in the days of peace the foundations of American life and union.
In war he had raised the strength, might and glory of the great Republic to a height never attained by any nation in history. With her left hand she was leading the advance of the conquering Allied Armies into the heart of Germany and with her right, on the other side of the globe, she was irresistibly and swiftly breaking up the power of Japan. And all the time ships, munitions, supplies, and food of every kind were aiding on a gigantic scale her Allies, great and small, in the course of the long struggle.
But all this was no more than worldly power and grandeur, had it not been that the causes of human freedom and of social justice to which so much of his life had been given, added a lustre to all this power and pomp and warlike might, a lustre which will long be discernible among men. He has left behind him a band of resolute and able men handling the numerous interrelated parts of the vast American war machine. He has left a successor who comes forward with firm step and sure conviction to carry on the task to its appointed end. For us it remains only to say that in Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the new world to the old.