[Chat] Second Bill of Rights

[Emil Volcheck]

Here's a very interesting article that appeared in the Chronicle of
Higher Education about the Second Bill of Rights proposed by FDR.

http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v50/i40/40b00901.htm

I'd never heard of this.  It reads like a European social contract.
Access to the Chronicle isn't free, so here's part of the article:


We Need to Reclaim the Second Bill of Rights
By CASS R. SUNSTEIN

On January 11, 1944, the United States was involved in its longest
conflict since the Civil War. The effort was going well. In a
remarkably short period, the tide had turned sharply in favor of the
Allies. Ultimate victory was no longer in serious doubt. The real
question was the nature of the peace.

At noon, America's optimistic, aging, self-assured, wheelchair-bound
president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, delivered his State of the Union
address to Congress. His speech wasn't elegant. It was messy,
sprawling, unruly, a bit of a pastiche, and not at all literary. But
because of what it said, this address, proposing a Second Bill of
Rights, has a strong claim to being the greatest speech of the 20th
century.

In the last few years, there has been a lot of discussion of World War
II and the Greatest Generation. We've heard much about D-Day, foreign
occupations, and presidential leadership amid threats to national
security. But the real legacy of the leader of the Greatest Generation
and the nation's most extraordinary president has been utterly
lost. His Second Bill of Rights is largely forgotten, although,
ironically, it has helped shape countless constitutions throughout the
world -- including the interim Iraqi constitution. To some extent, it
has guided our own deepest aspirations. And it helps us to straighten
out some national confusions that were never more prominent, and more
pernicious, than they are today.

It's past time to understand it.

Roosevelt began his speech by emphasizing that war was a shared
endeavor in which the United States was simply one participant. Now
that the war was in the process of being won, the main objective for
the future could be "captured in one word: Security." Roosevelt argued
that the term "means not only physical security which provides safety
from attacks by aggressors," but also "economic security, social
security, moral security." He insisted that "essential to peace is a
decent standard of living for all individual men and women and
children in all nations. Freedom from fear is eternally linked with
freedom from want."

[skipping... FDR said]

"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."

Then he listed the relevant rights:

    The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or
shops or farms or mines of the Nation.

    The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and
recreation.

    The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a
return which will give him and his family a decent living.

    The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an
atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by
monopolies at home or abroad.

    The right of every family to a decent home.

    The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve
and enjoy good health.

    The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old
age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.

    The right to a good education.

Having cataloged these eight rights, Roosevelt again made clear that
the Second Bill of Rights was a continuation of the war
effort. "America's own rightful place in the world depends in large
part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into
practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home
there cannot be lasting peace in the world." He concluded that
government should promote security instead of paying heed "to the
whining demands of selfish pressure groups who seek to feather their
nests while young Americans are dying."

Roosevelt, dead 15 months after delivering his speech, was unable to
take serious steps toward putting his Bill of Rights into effect. But
his proposal, now largely unknown within the United States, has had an
extraordinary influence internationally. It played a major role in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, completed in 1948 under the
leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt and publicly endorsed by American
officials at the time. The declaration proclaims that everyone has the
"right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being
of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing, and
medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security
in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old
age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."
The declaration also provides a right to education and social
security. It proclaims that "everyone has the right to work, to free
choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to
protection against unemployment."

[skipping]

Cass R. Sunstein is a professor of political science at the University
of Chicago and a professor of jurisprudence at the university's law
school. His most recent book is The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's
Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever, to be
published next month by Basic Books.



-- 
Emil Volcheck
volcheck at acm.org
http://acm.org/~volcheck