The American Way

Franklin D Roosevelt, Dagobert D. Runes, Dagobert D. Runes

• Publisher: Philosophical Library/Open Road
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781504067263
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

An enlightening selection of writings by the US president who defined the American way as he led the country through the twentieth century's darkest days.

As the thirty-second president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt navigated the country out of the Great Depression through an extraordinary agenda of public works and financial reforms known as the New Deal. He then inspired the American people to stand up to tyranny by speaking out against fascist regimes abroad during the Second World War.

These were defining moments for America, and Roosevelt brilliantly articulated their significance in a series of speeches and other public addresses. The American Way presents a selection of his historic writings, which established the ideological foundations of contemporary American democracy.

The Enemy Within

America has always had—and America still has—a small minority who assume that there are not enough good things to go around to give that minority all that it wants and at the same time to give the rest of America—the overwhelming majority of America—a humane and modern standard of living. Even today that minority is shortsightedly sure that its interests must lie in exploiting all who labor on the farm as well as in the mill and the mine.

But at the same time all over the country the unity of interest of all common men and women—warm-hearted, simple men and women, willing to live and let live, whether in factory or on farm—grows steadily more evident. Clearer every day is the one great lesson of history—the lesson taught by the Master of Galilee—that the only road to peace and the only road to a happier and better civilization is the road to unity—the road called the “Highway of Fellowship.”

IX-5-1938

When you come down to it, there is little difference between the feudal system and the Fascist system. If you believe in the one, you lean to the other.

With the overwhelming majority of the people of this land, I oppose feudalism. So do many among those who by virtue of their circumstances in life belong to the most prosperous 5 per cent of the population. Men and women in the professions, the overwhelming majority of the small storekeepers, a growing number of the bankers and business men—they are coming more and more to see that the continuation of the American system calls for the elimination of special privilege, the dissemination of the whole of the truth, and participation in prosperity by the people at the bottom of the ladder, as well as those in the middle and at the top.

One thing is certain—we are not going back to the old days. We are going forward to better days. We are calling for cooperation all along the line, and the cooperation is increasing because more and more people are coming to understand that abuses of the past which have been successfully eradicated are not going to be restored.

III-23-1938

The longer I live, the more am I convinced that there are two types of political leadership which are dangerous to the continuation of broad economic and social progress all along that long battlefront. The first type of political leadership which is dangerous to progress is represented by the man who harps on one or two remedies or proposals and claims that these one or two remedies will cure all our ills. The other type of dangerous leadership is represented by the man who says that he is in favor of progress but whose record shows that he hinders or hampers or tries to kill new measures of progress. He is that type of political leader who tells his friends that he does not like this or that or the other detail; and, at the same time, he utterly fails to offer a substitute that is practical or worthwhile.

VIII-11-1938

New ideas cannot be administered successfully by men with old ideas, for the first essential of doing a job well is the wish to see the job done at all.

Judge parties and candidates, not merely by what they promise, but by what they have done, by their records in office, by the kind of people they travel with, by the kind of people who finance and promote their campaigns. By their promoters ye shall know them.

XI-4-1938

There is, moreover, another enemy at home. That enemy is the mean and petty spirit that mocks at ideals, sneers at sacrifice and pretends that the American people can live by bread alone. If the spirit of God is not in us, and if we will not prepare to give all that we have and all that we are to preserve Christian civilization in our land, we shall go to destruction.

It is good and right that we should conserve these mountain heights of the old frontier for the benefit of the American people. But in this hour we have to safeguard a greater thing: the right of the people of this country to live as free men. Our vital task of conservation is to preserve the freedom that our forefathers won in this land, and the liberties that were proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence and embodied in our Constitution.

In these centuries of American civilization, greatly blessed by the bounties of nature, we succeeded in attaining liberty in Government and liberty of the person. In the process, in the light of past history, we realize now that we committed excesses which we are today seeking to atone for.

We used up or destroyed much of our natural heritage just because that heritage was so bountiful. We slashed our forests, we used our soil, we encouraged floods, we overconcentrated our wealth, we disregarded our unemployed—all of this so greatly that we were brought rather suddenly to face the fact that unless we gave thought to the lives of our children and grandchildren, they would no longer be able to live and to improve upon our American way of life.

In these later years we have tried sincerely and honestly to look ahead to the future years. We are at last definitely engaged in the task of conserving the bounties of nature, thinking in the terms of the whole of nature. We are trying at least to attain employment for all who would work and can work, and to provide a greater assurance of security throughout the life of the family.

From hard experience we know that the process is a long one, but most of us realize that if we can continue our effort without serious setbacks, the ideals of the American way of life can and will be attained by working everlastingly for the good of the whole and not for the good of any one privileged group.

So, from within our own borders, liberty through democracy can, I believe, be preserved in future years if we want to preserve it.

IX-2-1940

No people, least of all a democratic people, will be content to go without work or to accept some standard of living which obviously and woefully falls short of their capacity to produce. No people, least of all a people with our traditions of personal liberty, will endure the slow erosion of opportunity for the common man, the oppressive sense of helplessness under the domination of a few, which are overshadowing our whole economic life.

IV-29-1938

I am everlastingly angry only at those who assert vociferously that the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter are nonsense because they are unattainable. If those people had lived a century and a half ago, they would have sneered and said that the Declaration of Independence was utter piffle. If they had lived nearly a thousand years ago, they would have laughed uproariously at the idea of the Magna Charta. And if they had lived several thousand years ago, they would have derided Moses when he came from the mountains with the Ten Commandments.

IX-6-1943

We believe that people are even more important than machines. We believe that the material resources of America should serve the human resources of America.

We will not again allow people to be regimented by selfish minorities into bankruptcies and breadlines.

X-21-1936

The power of a few to manage the economic life of the nation must be diffused among the many or be transferred to the public and its democratically responsible government.

IV-29-1938

We understand the philosophy of those who offer resistance, of those who conduct a counter offensive against the American people’s march of social progress. It is not an opposition which comes necessarily from wickedness—it is an opposition that comes from sub-conscious resistance to any measure that disturbs the position of privilege.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocket-book often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

I am, as you know, a firm believer in private enterprise and in private property. I am a firm believer in the American opportunity of men and women to rise in private enterprise.

But, of course, if private opportunity is to remain safe, average men and women must be able to have it as a part of their own individual satisfaction in life and their own stake in democracy.

XI-1-1940

Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.

The 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. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the overprivileged alike.

But the resolute enemy within our gates is ever ready to beat down our words unless in greater courage we will fight for them.

The defeats and victories of these years have given to us as a people a new understanding of our Government and of ourselves. Never since the early days of the New England town meeting have the affairs of Government been so widely discussed and so clearly appreciated. It has been brought home to us that the only effective guide for the safety of this most worldly of worlds, the greatest guide of all, is moral principle.

We do not see faith, hope and charity as unattainable ideals, but we use them as stout supports of a Nation fighting the fight for ‘freedom in a modern civilization.

Faith—in the soundness of democracy in the midst of dictatorships.

Hope—renewed because we know so well the progress we have made.

Charity—in the true spirit of that grand old word. For charity literally translated from the original means love, the love that understands, that does not merely share the wealth of the giver, but in true sympathy and wisdom helps men to help themselves.

We seek not merely to make Government a mechanical implement, but to give it the vibrant personal character that is the very embodiment of human charity.

We are poor indeed if this Nation cannot afford to lift from every recess of American life the dread fear of the unemployed that they are not nee...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Contents
• Prefatory Note
• The American Way
• The Rights of the Common Man
• Young America
• The Inter-American Order
• Not Bread Alone
• Foreign Tyranny
• The Four Freedoms
• The Enemy Within
• Government with a Soul
• For Peace I Shall Labor
• True Education
• Dynamic Democracy
• We Belong to Many Races
• About the Author
• Copyright