freeSpeach
03-11-2009, 12:11 AM
Americans Should Embrace Their Radical History
The following resolution and argument was prepared at the invitation of the Yale Political Union (YPU). An organization composed of Yale student political groups from across the political spectrum, the YPU is the oldest collegiate debating society in America. Presented on February 25, 2009, the resolution passed by a margin of 2 to 1.
In his 1939 book – "It Is Later Than You Think: The Need for a Militant Democracy" – Max Lerner proffered: “The basic story in the American past, the only story ultimately worth the telling, is the story of the struggle between the creative and the frustrating elements in the American democratic adventure.”
With those words in mind, I move that: “Americans Should Embrace their Radical History.” And to second the resolution, I call upon a voice from 1930, one of America’s finest voices, the voice of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a man destined to become the greatest president of the twentieth century.
Looking back on 10 years of conservative-Republican presidential administration and what they had wrought – an intensifying economic crisis and spreading human misery that would come to be known as the Great Depression – FDR, who was then the Governor of New York State, said: “There is no question in my mind that it is time for the country to become fairly radical for a generation.”
And do we not see what Roosevelt saw then?
We have experienced three decades of conservative ascendance and power. Three decades, in which well-funded conservative movements, and ambitious and determined political and economic elites, secured power and subordinated the public good to corporate priorities, enriched the rich at the expense of working people, hollowed out the nation’s economy and public infrastructure, and harnessed religion and patriotism to the pursuit of power and wealth. In short, we have endured thirty years of rightwing political reaction and class war from above intended to undo or undermine the progressive advances of the 1930s and 1960s.
Plus, if all that were not enough, we have suffered eight years of a presidency – the presidency of George W. Bush – marked not only by the tragedies of 9/11, war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and the collapse of an interstate highway bridge in Minnesota, but also by assaults on our civil liberties, the denigration of human rights, breaches in the wall separating church and state, tax cuts for the wealthy, a campaign to privatize Social Security, continued corporate attacks on labor unions, and the pursuit of a politics of fear and loathing – all of which has not only led us to the brink of economic and social catastrophe, but also effectively placed the American dream and the nation’s exceptional purpose and promise under siege.
http://waronyou.com/topics/americans-should-embrace-their-radical-history/
The following resolution and argument was prepared at the invitation of the Yale Political Union (YPU). An organization composed of Yale student political groups from across the political spectrum, the YPU is the oldest collegiate debating society in America. Presented on February 25, 2009, the resolution passed by a margin of 2 to 1.
In his 1939 book – "It Is Later Than You Think: The Need for a Militant Democracy" – Max Lerner proffered: “The basic story in the American past, the only story ultimately worth the telling, is the story of the struggle between the creative and the frustrating elements in the American democratic adventure.”
With those words in mind, I move that: “Americans Should Embrace their Radical History.” And to second the resolution, I call upon a voice from 1930, one of America’s finest voices, the voice of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a man destined to become the greatest president of the twentieth century.
Looking back on 10 years of conservative-Republican presidential administration and what they had wrought – an intensifying economic crisis and spreading human misery that would come to be known as the Great Depression – FDR, who was then the Governor of New York State, said: “There is no question in my mind that it is time for the country to become fairly radical for a generation.”
And do we not see what Roosevelt saw then?
We have experienced three decades of conservative ascendance and power. Three decades, in which well-funded conservative movements, and ambitious and determined political and economic elites, secured power and subordinated the public good to corporate priorities, enriched the rich at the expense of working people, hollowed out the nation’s economy and public infrastructure, and harnessed religion and patriotism to the pursuit of power and wealth. In short, we have endured thirty years of rightwing political reaction and class war from above intended to undo or undermine the progressive advances of the 1930s and 1960s.
Plus, if all that were not enough, we have suffered eight years of a presidency – the presidency of George W. Bush – marked not only by the tragedies of 9/11, war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, and the collapse of an interstate highway bridge in Minnesota, but also by assaults on our civil liberties, the denigration of human rights, breaches in the wall separating church and state, tax cuts for the wealthy, a campaign to privatize Social Security, continued corporate attacks on labor unions, and the pursuit of a politics of fear and loathing – all of which has not only led us to the brink of economic and social catastrophe, but also effectively placed the American dream and the nation’s exceptional purpose and promise under siege.
http://waronyou.com/topics/americans-should-embrace-their-radical-history/