The Tribune 03.03.05

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA, JULY 10, 1940. The commencement speaker at the University of Virginia rose laboriously to the podium and, after acknowledging President Newcomb and the graduating class, asked the young graduates to contemplate what lay ahead, not for themselves, but for the United States. “What is to become of the country we know?” the speaker asked, and seeking his own answer, he spoke of freedom itself being at stake as Europe erupted into war and World War II loomed ominously ahead.

The speaker, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, father of graduating law student Franklin Jr., was one of America’s great communicators, uttering some of the most memorable passages in American History. Roosevelt took full advantage of the new technology of radio, broadcasting his Fireside Chats and state speeches for all 130 million Americans to hear.

The President spoke often of the covenant Americans have with each other to rise above individual interest and think of the larger good. He spoke of the morality of guaranteeing for all citizens equal opportunity and freedom from want, and of the basic responsibility to provide old-age pensions, unemployment insurance and adequate health care for all. One-third of the nation, he said, was “ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished,” and “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

Americans willingly, and for the first time, surrendered a portion of their paychecks to establish federal retirement, disability and unemployment benefits for posterity. “To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected,” said Roosevelt, “This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.”

It is time again to ask, “What is to become of the country we know?” Have our own generations been given so much that we no longer value the ethics of the New Deal? Are we prepared to allow Congress, President Bush and our state lawmakers to tear up these social contracts and institutionalize instead the ethics of maximizing individual gain.

In Washington and Richmond, the only obligation to posterity that lawmakers speak of is rolling back taxes so that those who already have much will be relieved of the burden to provide for the common good. Social Security will be stripped of trillions of dollars so that each individual can maximize “personal accounts.” Sound, “pay as you go” financing will be abandoned for the convenience of borrowing against the prosperity of future generations.

The integrity of calling for sacrifice has yielded to the “you can have it all” sound bite. How can we engage in a war overseas without asking all Americans to pay the taxes needed to defend freedom and adequately arm our fighting forces? How can we leave their families and widows destitute? How can we fail to provide for those injured in the line of duty?

Roosevelt said, “We can’t bally-hoo ourselves back to prosperity,” but he was obviously not talking about our generation and its current leaders.