Rich boys play the same old game.
It’s June 27, 1936.
President Franklin Roosevelt stands before a crowd of one hundred thousand who have gathered in a Philadelphia football stadium to watch him accept the Democratic presidential nomination.
And with millions more listening on radio, FDR vows to finish the battle against the ‘Princes of Privilege’ he had begun four years earlier.
Success would require the common sense efforts of all Americans.
But, as a worker then said, FDR "is the first man in the White House to understand that my boss is a son of a bitch."
Much work remained to be done.
Although millions had found work through New Deal programs, eight million still remained unemployed.
The Supreme Court had thrown out many of FDR’s policies.
And a recalcitrant Congress had withered when confronted with new ideas and shirked its responsibilities.
Members of the business community opposed him.
They chafed at the recent adoption of federal labor laws giving workers the right to organize and disliked the new Social Security Act.
And they worried about the growing executive power of the presidency.
But FDR was determined to press on.
He’ vowed to fight the ‘economic royalists’ who had carved out new economic dynasties ‘through new uses of corporations, banks and securities…[and] thirsting for power, [have] reached out for control over Government itself.’
FDR scoffed at their complaint that opposing them was unamerican.
‘These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America.’
‘What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power.’
‘In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution.’
FDR had a different vision:
‘In the place of the palace of privilege we seek to build a temple out of faith and hope and charity.’
Government policy would be ‘guided by moral principle.’
‘It was the only effective guide for the safety of this most worldly of worlds,’ he said.
And the stakes couldn’t have been higher.
We are waging a great and successful war…for the survival of democracy,’ FDR declared.
‘We are fighting to save a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world.’
And here we go again.
The current inequality in incomes and wealth has created a new generation of Princes of Privilege who are eager to wrest control of the government.
It’s the same old game.
And, like before, the survival of democracy is at stake.
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I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
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