We have been watching the Ken Burns documentary on the Roosevelts during the last few weeks. I've learned a lot about Theodore Roosevelt that I never knew and it has been fun to watch Franklin and Eleanor develop. Actually, I don't think that I ever realized Franklin, Eleanor, and Teddy were all relatives.
Anyway, the documentary is a good way to understand the rise of liberalism in American politics because it shows us the state of affairs in American life when business and wealth are all powerful. This is the condition of life into which we will soon fall if Conservatives (so-called) have their way. It is ironic and impossible to understand why we are collapsing into this mire, given the fact that it is contrary to the well being of 80 or 90% of Americans. But we are.
Mind you, there is nothing wrong with business or with wealth as such. The issue lies in a moral relationship of the people. When the wealthy are interested only in their wealth and when business is interested only in making more money, then the lives of the majority of people are in jeopardy. We need business and business organizers to create products that we will want to consume and thereby to create job opportunities for other people. But it is a moral fact that these products would not appear if it were not for the people who fill the jobs and do the work. Business organizers would be mere fools if they did not have people to do the work. So here is their moral obligation; that is, they must treat their employees with due consideration for their important part in production. The moral problem of Capitalism is the tendency to treat workers in quite the other way, as expendable units of productivity who can be replaced always by someone who is hungrier.
The fascinating thing about the Roosevelts is that they were very wealthy but, nevertheless, were raised in the belief that wealth must be used in the defense of people who are less fortunate. Teddy and Franklin were in opposing parties but both worked for the benefit of ordinary people.
When did we get this winner-take-all mentality in the US? Well, what the documentary shows us, painfully, is that that attitude has always been with us. Teddy, Franklin, and Eleanor were constantly attacked by Conservatives for their liberal beliefs and political actions. Very little has actually changed. The moral attitude of these Conservatives is simply the hope that the poor people will just die quietly so as not to be a disturbance.
