Pedro Angel Serrano
28th November 02008
It's been a while since the election and I have not commented on it.
When I watched the elections I watched them alone.
Not by choice, but as the night progressed I was glad
to be watching the results and watch the dignified high tech free
coverage on PBS.
Science is objective, people are not.
But by being alone I was able to deal with my emotions
and mine alone.
Over the last couple of weeks I have been taking time to
put all of this in historical context.
There's a historian names David McCullough. In a talk he gave he said,
"I make the argument that there is no such thing as the past."
Think about that. An Historian said that!
The example he gave was that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson never said
"Isn't it fascinating living in the past as we do?
Don't we look quaint in our funny outfits?"
No, indeed, they lived in the present. And in the present they had no idea how there revolution would turn out. There expectations were not positive. They had no idea how things would turn out. And after victory and independence, they had no idea how long the republic would last. At best it was an experiment and if they lived long enough to see it survive they may have considered it a success.
I have no idea what the future holds.
There is only this eternal present we experience from moment to moment.
But history can provide perspective.
The path this nation and its people are on has been trod before.
This became clear after reading an Inauguration speech.
Not the one Barak Obama will be making.
But one given when the United States seemed it was falling apart.
Other countries were watching as the nation struggled over a savage depression. Would the great experiment in democracy fail today or tomorrow?
When F.D.R. was inaugurated one of the options given him was to
suspend the Constitution and declare martial law. Instead he gave the
first of his "Fire Side Chats", to inspire confidence in the banks and the future.
Afterwards he got up and is quoted as saying, "I think it's time for some liquid refreshment." By that he meant the abolition of the amendment banning alcohol.
He knew the citizens of the U.S. didn't need martial law. They needed a BEER!
That ladies and gentle men is leadership! There was another form of leadership he showed. One of the most famous lines from his speech first speech is "So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself..."
That's the only line people seem to know.
But it's what he says afterwards that matters.
"nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
Reading it reminded me of the last descriptive words of the star spangled banner, "...the land of the free and the home of the brave."
Roosevelt reminded the people of that with his first paragraph.
That was a repeating theme; unity and courage.
Unity courage was the sentiment John McCain put forth in his concession speech.
It was what Barak Obama as well.
Unity and courage was what F.D.R. put forth as he started
his first term. And what he said in "the past" sounds all too
familiar to me in this eternal present.
I do want to believe this is still, and always will be,
The Home of the Brave. And I have made a
personal pledge that any dickhead in the news media
try's to undermine that quality in any way will,
if I should meet them on the street, get a
steel toe attitude adjustment up his ass.
Ummm... Sorry. Lost me eloquence for a second.
Below is some of the home work I did since the election.
It's a LOT for a blog but hey. I have a whole pumpkin pie to finish.
One more cup of coffee then later a glass or three of Johnny Walker.
I put in BOLD the parts I feel speaks to us today.
I love you all.
United we stand, divided we fall.
Rev. Pedro Angel Serrano
I found it at
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057/
I have put in BOLD those statements
that seem to relate to our situation now.
==============
In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.
More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.
Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.
Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.
There are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the several States.
Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.
The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all parts of the United States—a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that the recovery will endure.
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.
If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.
With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.
Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.
It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.
I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.
But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.
For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.
We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of the national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.
We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.
In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.
Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933, as published in Samuel Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Volume Two: The Year of Crisis, 1933 (New York: Random House, 1938), 11–16.
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057/
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