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Franklin Delano Roosevelt - FDR

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Please consider the following quote and place your thoughts about it within your reply:

"We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace, business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob."
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt also known by his initials, FDR - 32nd President of the United States (1933-1945).

FDR Roosevelt Delano Franklin

No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level--I mean the wages of decent living.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt - FDR History & Civil Business Politics

"Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing great - greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our great natural resources....


And finally, in our progress towards a resumption of work, we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order. There must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments. There must be an end to speculation with other people's money. And there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency. These, my friends, are the lines of attack."
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933.

FDR Roosevelt Delano Franklin

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power."
-- President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

FDR Roosevelt Delano Franklin

"True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt - FDR

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundnce of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little"
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt FDR

I think it is interesting that he compares the danger of a government run by "Organized money" as dangerous as one run by "Organized mob," since he and many after him have sought to reduce the federal representative system of government and replace it with a purer democracy.

This is interesting because many of the great political thinkers like Plato and Aristotle see democracies as organized mobs and unhealthy modes of government.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt FDR Politics Business Civil & History

I agree with FDR's moves being unconventional. However, FDR didn't help us out of the Great Depression - he prolonged it. He enacted more federal control over the private sector. For a current prime example of what that results in, look to Venezuela. That was the US during the Great Depression. Where before we had hiccups that righted themselves, we instead latched onto Keynesian policies that drove us deeper into depression.