![]() But why am I wasting my time talking about courage to a liberal like you? You don't have a clue about the meaning of the word! None of you do! And then… there's love, Eleanor. Actually, you don't watch them starve in the streets, but you do read the statistics reports on all the death and suffering, and you figure out how to profit from it–and that takes courage. ![]() It takes courage to watch poor unemployed people starving in the streets the way that the free-markets intended them to starve. Oh, oo, oh, I'd rather starve on the streets than make millions manipulating the stock market, because I'm a shirker, oh, pity me, oo, I feel sorry for myself rather than pulling myself up by my bootstraps and wriggling into a rich woman's uterus while she sleeps so that I can be born rich, oo, oh no I'm too lazy to do that, oo!' You see what I'm talking about, Eleanor? No, clearly you don't. Morgan Jr., because oh, oo, I'm too lazy to have been born into a rich family and too much of a bum to have inherited an investment bank. I guess I should just pat myself on the back for that, right Eleanor? What naive liberals like you still don't get is that it's easy to go around giving hand-outs to bums whenever they give you a song and dance about, 'Oh, help me, oh, I'm a starving parasite and I want to loot Mr. You created a social safety net and empowered workers and gave rise to a new middle class." President, you ended the Depression and you've defeated fascism. If only I hadn't been swept up in all that trendy class war stuff and told America, 'This Is Our Blinov Tractor Moment'–if only I'd had the courage and bold audacity to come up with something like that, maybe things would have turned out better, don't you think, Eleanor? But no, I blew it. "Oh Eleanor, if only I'd dropped all the malarkey about unemployment-this and greed-and-inequality-that, and instead called on Americans to think of greater, bigger things-things that don't upset rich people. ![]() In fact, you almost have to wonder if FDR regretted his failure to invoke the Blinov Tractor Moment when he lay on his death bed in 1945: In defining immediate factors which enter into our quest, I have spoken to the Congress and the people of three great divisions: I recall to your attention my message to the Congress last June in which I said, "Among our objectives I place the security of the men, women, and children of the Nation first." That remains our first and continuing task: and in a very real sense every major legislative enactment of this Congress should be a component part of it. ![]() But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him and his a proper security, a reasonable leisure, and a decent living throughout life is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power. We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. In building toward this end we do not destroy ambition, nor do we seek to divide our wealth into equal shares on stated occasions. We have, however, a clear mandate from the people, that Americans must forswear that conception of the acquisition of wealth which, through excessive profits, creates undue private power over private affairs and, to our misfortune, over public affairs as well. No wise man has any intention of destroying what is known as the "profit motive," because by the profit motive we mean the right by work to earn a decent livelihood for ourselves and our families. ![]() Both of these manifestations of injustice have retarded happiness. In spite of our efforts and in spite of our talk we have not weeded out the overpriviledged and we have not effectively lifted up the underpriviledged. We find our population suffering from old inequalities, little changed by past sporadic remedies. ![]()
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