Foto by tgw, New York City, 2011------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FDR Speaks From the Grave
This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. 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.
President Roosevelt's inaugural message from 1932.
In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.
More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Same speech...1932.
The speech continues:
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, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. 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 know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
Roosevelt speaking some interesting advice. This speech was made after the 1929 stock market crash--a crash, by the way, caused by Wall Street over-extending credit through marginal buying, thus making stocks worthless...and you should know the rest of the story. Roosevelt, like President Obama, rode to a big victory over the Republicans (Wall Streeters) on the backs of the poor, the working class, the Blacks, the farmers, the unions, the ruined--those who in those days didn't even have electricity yet and were still taking craps in outhouses. Those people depended on this aristocratic New Yorker to bail them out of the sinking ship the Wall Streeters had cast them out to sea on (hoping they would drown). The common man (all of us) listened intently to Roosevelt's speeches from this first speech on. People loved this dude for his fireside chats, what he called his weekly radio broadcasts. When he gave a major speech, everybody scrunched up close to their radios and cupped their ears to make sure they heard every word he said.
And here's some more of this famous speech that I'll guarantee you only a handful of Americans know anything about except for the "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" line, which is really the least important message to be gained from rereading the speech--or listening to it, which is easily done on the Internet.
The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
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 greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.
Oh, only if Obama would make such a speech. That above paragraph is still true to this very day.
The so-called "killing" of Osama bin Laden is currently the ballyhoo bullshit being flung at We the People widely across the infertile furrows of our media. Commercial teevee has Katie Couric (ex-cheerleader)(and I use Katie to represent all the look-alike talking heads on commercial-pap teevee) looking as serious as her coldest nature and heavy make up allow commenting on this "killing" and what it now means. Katie and her copatriots always reach the same conclusion that though this Evil Bastard (who had nothing to do with 9/11, by the way) is DEAD and BURIED AT SEA we still must stay the War on Terror, that phony trumped up war trumped up by some of the killingest bastards on earth--recall: as Governor of Texas, Little Boy Bush personally supervised the execution of 157 human beings no matter their pleas of innocence or hidden evidence or unfair trials--and these 157 human beings were mostly Black or Latina in the case of the one woman G.W. had executed--the woman who became a "born-again" Christian in prison and begged for mercy from execution on the grounds she was a changed woman, blah, blah, blah, and Georgie Porgie said, "Hell, blow that gas up her spick ass anyway, boyz. She should appreciate the fact I'm sendin' her to straight to Heaven" (said with a smirking grin)).
And speaking of burying Osama at sea: I thought it quaint that before the Navy Seals dumped this Super Evil One's body out of the helicopter while over the nearby sea (one doesn't think of Pakistan being near an ocean), the NCIS unit that was tagging along with the Navy Seals who shot and killed Osama--one bullet just over his right eye (where a righthanded sharpshooter would aim--or spot with a laser beam) and one bullet in his chest (the head and the heart, where all hunters know are the kill points)--guaranteed us--through DNA tests they made while carrying out this operation--that it was Osama bin Laden himself because they matched the DNA they took from the assassinated "Osama" to that of the real Osama's real sister's DNA (which the Bush Family provided them, I assume). That's as puzzling a report to believe as proving Jesus Christ was a real person.
In one report I read last night, the government claimed one of the people killed in this humane and patriotically and democratically carried-out assassination attack was the Devil's son (We the People killed Hussein's sons, too). Confusing since also in this report, it stated that one of the women in the death room told the Navy Seals this guy whose head they had just shattered, which meant his face was blown away probably--he was evidently shot at close range--was indeed, yes, the Devil himself, Osama bin Laden. [Now they are saying one of his daughters was in the shambled room and watched her father being butchered to pieces by Navy Seals (why Navy Seals?) gunfire.]
Another obviously government-composed report I read this morning stated that President Obama himself had ordered bin Laden found and if possible captured alive...er-ah, though if that was impossible, then certainly they had his permission to kill the bastard. Whether Obama ordered that if this Evil Asshole was killed then they were to throw his carcass overboard into the sea wasn't mentioned.
I'm not surprised if it's not a trick put in Obama's lap by the Clinton-Bush faction that has their hands up his ass controlling him. He played Humble Proud American and tried like the Great Communicator to spin this death in a politically correct way. It's also naturally curious to me how this surprise assassination comes smack-dab at the beginning, the lead-in year, of what's going to be the most expensive political (presidential) campaign in the history of the world. One in which our first Black president is going to have to raise another billion dollars...I stop right there and shake my head and walk away in doubt and buzzing skepticism from this mess.
I've always believed something suspicious was up with bin Laden after Bush blew him off with the "he don't matter to me anymore" statement. It's very suspicious, too, since Pappy Bush was once head of the CIA and Osama bin Laden the Yemen-born (where's his birth certificate?) Saudi dissident was an agent of the CIA. Come on, these creepy CIA bastards are more ruthless and cagey than Osama and all his stupid shoe bombers and underwear bombers and set-up-by-the-cops synagogue blower uppers from Nyack or Peter King's imaginary secret cell of al-Queda-aiding American Imans could ever hope to be. Come on, I mean the CIA are the ones who brought this bastard onto the world stage. Like how did Osama keep getting the millions of dollars it took for him to exist? The same question could be asked about where al-Queda gets the money to buy its arms and bombs? How is al-Queda still existing in Yemen for instance? Yemen is soaked through and through with CIA agents--after the Cole incident--anybody remember the Cole incident?
We are chasing Devils rather than listening to our past intelligence--like that expressed in President Roosevelt's inaugural address.
Obama seems to be following completely in Reagan's footsteps. Reagan's his hero. Obama said so in his book. He likes G.W. Bush, too. He said so after he met the man. He loves General Petraus who he's just elevated out of Afghanistan to make him head of the CIA, once supposedly a nonmilitary agency--though now all of our 16 spy agencies, which is what they all are, are lumped under one heading as they were by the infamous G.W. "Georgie Porgie" Bush during his ruthless and "fuck you" reign. [I just heard on teevee that President Obama is coming to Ground Zero to make a trumped-up superpatriotic nationalistic superbly communicated speech and that (LISTEN TO THIS!) he may be inviting Georgie Porgie Bush to join him--Obama is going to give this little weasel son of the true Devil in all of this, Pappy G.H.W. Bush. I wonder if Obama has invited old wobbly legs to this affair? I wonder if Slick Willie will be there? Does the President have to pay these ex-Presidents an appearance fee?]
Back to FDR:
Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.
Finally, in our progress toward 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.
And Giving FDR the Last Word:The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all parts of the United States—a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that the recovery will endure.
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.
This FDR speech I found at: historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057/
thegrowlingnewdealwolf
For The Daily Growler
1 comment:
Fabulous FDR speech. It is total relevant NOW!
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