The American Idealist

Extract

The mind of Franklin Roosevelt was young and spacious. There was a lot of room in it, room for imagination, room for the freshness of ideas and room for the future. He was not content to live by formulas or under the pressure of the routine and the antiquated. He was never deluded by the lies and phrases which try to conceal reality and deaden truth. He saw our dangers and our weaknesses and he pioneered to save us from them. For, among our various statesmen, he was a pioneer in the establishing of social and economic responsibility. He believed in the notion of community within our own nation and beyond in the entire world. From the moment of his taking office he revealed his own sense of responsibility towards the whole people, not to any single class or group. And he instructed—sometimes bitterly—the people of power and fortune so that they would recognize their obligations towards the less powerful and the less fortunate members of society. With grimness and reluctance this teaching was often received. Nevertheless it was instructive and it was inescapable. No man could fail to learn the great lesson—that he was not to be alone and self-concerned, that he was rather to be conscious of his responsible membership with other men in an American community.