Thursday, November 15, 2007

110 - The Right-Wing Goal Of Transferring Wealth From Everyone Else To The Already-Rich, And What FDR Had To Say About It

Today you'll hear all about the true bottom line when it comes to the right-wing.

As part of this, you'll hear some breathtaking clips of Franklin Delano Roosevelt condemning the right-wingers of his time.

A preview:

One of my favorite quotes of all-time is from John Kenneth Galbraith:

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

I have what I call the Jack Clark corollary to that wonderful Galbraith passage.

Everything the right-wing does is designed to accomplish one of two things, either:
(a) transfer wealth from everyone else to the rich, or,
(b) distract everyone else from the fact that (a) is occurring.

For example, since 1980, the richest 1% of Americans have doubled their share of the nation's income.

It's the most unequal situation since the Great Depression.

Transfer wealth from everyone else, to the wealthy.

Here's a bit of what Roosevelt said, that you can hear directly from his own mouth, in the podcast:

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the Government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the Government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the Government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

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.

These 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.

Check out the podcast for the rest!

(PS: Right-wingers, if you want to write in to me, fine, but at least do me the courtesy of listening to the podcast first. Please don't respond just on the basis of the brief preview above. Thanks!!)

Jack Clark 3:37 PM [+]
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