Really good stuff Michael! (And a great reminder for me to finally switch to a paid subscription to your work.) FDR has also been on my mind recently, and I think you get this exactly right. FDR was a radical in ways that his current haloed status prevents us from appreciating. Much of American liberalism since his time has been about protecting the frankly quasi-socialistic state that he created even as it’s been chipped away at from all sides. Probably a better liberalism is, instead of trying to defend the carcass of the New Deal, to advance fresh institutions that embody liberal values. I think the Obama/Biden era has been about trying to set this in motion but lacks the political will to really drive it through. The point is that the job of government is actually to govern. And FDR understood this and executed on it better than anyone since then.
That was fascinating, Michael. I think it’s important for voters to look back at where the country was and why our social safety net was created, including social security, which a huge number of seniors rely on to sustain them after retirement, a social program they, and we, pay into for some 40+ years. Carrying the New Deal history through to today is really the big picture most younger people are missing. What’s the saying? If we don’t learn from history, we are condemned to repeat it. Thanks for the history reminder.
Brilliant article. And I agree. We must all read more books and look up words when we don’t know what they mean. My dad never sits down to read a book without a dictionary near by. He’s been doing this for 70 years and all of his kids read the same way. Language matters. He reads 70-80 books a year and still finds words he doesn’t know.
Really good stuff Michael! (And a great reminder for me to finally switch to a paid subscription to your work.) FDR has also been on my mind recently, and I think you get this exactly right. FDR was a radical in ways that his current haloed status prevents us from appreciating. Much of American liberalism since his time has been about protecting the frankly quasi-socialistic state that he created even as it’s been chipped away at from all sides. Probably a better liberalism is, instead of trying to defend the carcass of the New Deal, to advance fresh institutions that embody liberal values. I think the Obama/Biden era has been about trying to set this in motion but lacks the political will to really drive it through. The point is that the job of government is actually to govern. And FDR understood this and executed on it better than anyone since then.
That was fascinating, Michael. I think it’s important for voters to look back at where the country was and why our social safety net was created, including social security, which a huge number of seniors rely on to sustain them after retirement, a social program they, and we, pay into for some 40+ years. Carrying the New Deal history through to today is really the big picture most younger people are missing. What’s the saying? If we don’t learn from history, we are condemned to repeat it. Thanks for the history reminder.
Very interesting and right on. Let's hope someone will have the backbone to bring the current situation to an end.
Brilliant article. And I agree. We must all read more books and look up words when we don’t know what they mean. My dad never sits down to read a book without a dictionary near by. He’s been doing this for 70 years and all of his kids read the same way. Language matters. He reads 70-80 books a year and still finds words he doesn’t know.