Three score and six years ago, the greatest president of the 20th century gave one of his greatest speeches. On Jan. 11, 1944, in a State of the Union address that deserves to be ranked with Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" and King's "I Have a Dream" speech, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for recognition of a "Second Bill of Rights."
According to FDR:
"This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights -- among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty. As our nation has grown in size and stature, however -- as our industrial economy expanded -- these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness."
"We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. 'Necessitous men are not free men.' People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all -- regardless of station, race, or creed."
President Roosevelt was not promoting economic rights that were necessarily enforceable in court, but rather economic benefits and opportunities that every American should expect to enjoy by virtue of citizenship in our democratic republic.
Many of the rights he identified have been secured by programs with bipartisan support. These include "the right to a good education" (the G.I. Bill, student loans, Pell Grants, Head Start, federal aid to K-12 schools) and "the right of every family to a decent home" (federally subsidized home loans and tax breaks for home ownership). But even before the global economic crisis, the U.S. fell short when it came to full employment -- "the right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation" -- and a living wage -- "the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation."
Roosevelt's actions is in keeping with Western beliefs and traditions since the days of Alexander the Great.
ReplyDeleteAn army(nation) of free men will always defeat an army(nation) of slaves fighting under fear of a king(dictator).
I have a paragraph written by Lim Chin Siong about 50 years ago in the Fajar that warned us not to trade off freedom, rights and deomcracy for economic gains otherwise we, the ordinary people, will find ourselves in a situation no different from when we were a colony of the British empire.
ReplyDeletehttp://4.bp.blogspot.com/_XtsjYwdj2
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REX Comments as follows,
ReplyDeleteLucky Singaporean please can you check the URL again, it's not working. "Page Cannot be found
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A quarter of a year ago, our chief representative for workers' rights said that we have the right to be Cheaper, Better & Faster.
ReplyDeleteParliament should go and frame it up as our Bill Of Rights.
"among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty. As our nation has grown in size and stature, however -- as our industrial economy expanded -- these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness."
ReplyDeleteand the right to critique and call a spade a spade.
We live in a different era now. we now have 'suicide terrorism' today - misguided humans are prepared to die in the process of killing innocent lives, or lives that do not hold the same value and beliefs as their own.
ReplyDeleteSingapore is lucky that terrorism is under control. For countries like Pakistan, India, Indonesia, etc, the amount of resources to eradicate terrorism is so huge that it could bankrupt the whole nation. Authorities have to be vigilant all the time, whereas suicide terrorists only need to be lucky once, to cause harm.
In such situation, it is not even safe to walk to school, or go to the market! Ideals like 'free speech, free press, free worship, democracy and universal suffrage' are secondary, and not important, if the world is besieged with suicide terrorism.
Here are some timeless observations from Thomas Jefferson
ReplyDelete- 3rd President of the United States (1801–1809)
- principal author of the American Declaration of Independence (1776)
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories."
"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery."
"Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people"
"The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God."
"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."
Source:
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_by/thomas+jefferson