Roosevelt the RadicalCame across discussion of Roosevelt's "Second Bill of Rights" in two places this morning; this indicates to me that something is going on. Expect to see more about this in the near future.
Bob Herbert in the Times lays out the Roosevelt agenda and wonders
where we went wrong. Here are some of the proposed "rights":
"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."Now I think we can all agree that most of these rights represent social goods; the only argument is whether government should be in charge of ensuring them.
The second reference to the Second Bill of Rights may explain why we got the first. John Hinderaker,
writing in the Weekly Standard notes:
None of this, however, discouraged the conference participants from staking out bold new constitutional ground. The tone was set in the "opening dialogue" between professors Bruce Ackerman and Cass Sunstein. Power Line sent one of our East Coast correspondents to sit in on the discussion. The conversation left no doubt about the "rights" that, according to these eminent liberals, should be constitutionally enshrined by the year 2020.
The touchstone is Franklin Roosevelt's "Second Bill of Rights," which would recognize a right to "a useful and remunerative job"; sufficient earnings to provide "adequate" food, clothing, and recreation; a "decent" home; a "good education"; and "adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health."Note that interestingly, the focus of the people cited in Hinderaker's article is not on passing these rights legislatively, or even amending the US Constitution to provide for them; rather it's on "finding" these rights (and more) in the Constitution as it exists.
For an example of the "and more", consider this:
Economic citizenship--stakeholder society in which every young adult gets a form of citizenship inheritance of $80,000, funded by a wealth tax . . .This is of course the proposal of the "Stakeholder Society" a ridiculous book that made the rounds of the lefty talk shows a few years back. It's a classic Democrat proposal: Something for nothing.
