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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Sage words

PJ:  In recent years, Scandinavian countries have been rated the highest in the western world because for their citizens feeling of personal freedom, happiness and upward mobility.  These same countries have some of the most efficient social programs in the world.  It is no coincidence that removing the fear and worries about paying for health care, education, child care, university and retirement have contributed to these citizen's feelings of well-being.  

But the right wing in the US loves to paint such programs with its evil-socialism brush.  Funny how they also lavish praise on Israel while ignoring that Israel too has many socialised services such as fantastic socialized medicine (of which Mitt Romney praised during his summer visit in 2012: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/07/30/whiplash-mitt-romney-lavishes-praise-on-israels-socialist-government-controlled-healthcare-system/).  Perhaps the US should look just a little closer at reality and not paint all people who support government assisted programs as boogie men in waiting.  


Katrina vanden Heuvel
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Opinion Writer

FDR and the fight to defend our freedom

On Jan. 6, 1941, as Nazi Germany tightened its cruel grip on Europe, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his annual State of the Union address. He acknowledged the terrible costs of war and argued that the sacrifice would be accepted by future generations only if it led to a newer, better world for all people everywhere, a world based on the four human freedoms central to democracy — freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

They were, in his view, fundamental American values, and an antidote to the poison of growing tyranny. Three years later, in his 1944 State of the Union address, Roosevelt translated those values into what became known as the “Economic Bill of Rights” — an uncompromising articulation of economic security as a condition of individual freedom.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-fdr-and-the-fight-to-defend-our-freedom/2012/11/05/c50c147e-2759-11e2-b2a0-ae18d6159439_story.html?hpid=z5

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