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(This was a post I made on Table Talk. Click my sig for the link to the thread.)
Here's a brief excerpt from FDR's first inaugural address:
(O)ur distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for... Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.
Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence . . . Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True, they have tried. But their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit, they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
That FDR was a 'purtysmart fella. But it gets better. Here's something FDR said that I think is more than just relevant, it's an explanation of exactly where we are today:
“The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.”
This isn't Obama's doing, at least in so much as he did not
create it. This state of affairs was already the case and had been
the case probably since about the time that Eisenhower gave his
farewell address:
"(T)hreats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. ... In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Substitute (or add) Wall Street to "military industrial complex" and we're on the mark in the modern era. The US government is now no more than a wholly owned subsidiary of finance and defense contractors. We the people are simply here to be of service. Any illusion of actual freedom is just that, an illusion.
