Second Bill of Rights

In the runup to the Second World War, the United States had suffered through the Great Depression following the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Roosevelt's election at the end of 1932 was based on a commitment to reform the economy and society through a "New Deal" program. The first indication of a commitment to government guarantees of social and economic rights came in an address to the Commonwealth Club on September 23, 1932, during his campaign. The speech was written with Adolf A. Berle, a professor of corporate law at Columbia University. A key passage read: Throughout Roosevelt's presidency, he returned to the same theme continually over the course of the New Deal. Also in the Atlantic Charter, an international commitment was made as the Allies thought about how to "win the peace" following victory in the Second World War. The US's commitment to non-interventionism in World War II ending with the 1941 Lend-Lease act, and later Pearl Harbor attacks, resulted in the mobilisation of the war state. The generous terms of the act, in conjunction with the economic growth of the US were key in allowing the US to establish new global order with the help of Allied powers in the aftermath of war. This motivation to establish a new global order provided the infrastructure for the implementation of an international standard of human rights, seen with the Second Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Akira Iriye's proposition that the US desired to transform the post war Pacific after their own image is representative of the wider desire to raise global standards to that of the US, feeding into ideals of American Exceptionalism. The effect of wider democratisation and social reform is discussed in Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man. == Roosevelt's speech ==

During Roosevelt's January 11, 1944, message to the Congress on the State of the Union, he said the following: == Found footage ==

(January 11, 1944) He asked that newsreel cameras film the last portion of the address, concerning the Second Bill of Rights. This footage was believed lost until it was uncovered in 2008 in South Carolina by Michael Moore while researching the film Capitalism: A Love Story. The footage shows Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights address in its entirety as well as a shot of the eight rights printed on a sheet of paper. == Criticism and legacy==

Some historians have pointed to the contradiction between FDR's Economic Bill of Rights and his decision to keep Japanese Americans in concentration camps contrary to the urgings of key advisors including Attorney General Francis Biddle and Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes. David T. Beito has argued that "Japanese Americans had particular reason to regard the Economic Bill of Rights as a cruel joke. For them, a "decent home" often meant a desert dormitory with Army-issued cots. Any "remunerative job" in the camps paid considerably less than if performed by a white counterpart. The freedom from "unfair competition" meant nothing to people shorn of their businesses because of confinement in the camps." After Roosevelt's death in 1945, the Fair Deal program of President Harry Truman's administration extended and enlarged Roosevelt's New Deal vision. According to historian Alonzo Hamby, "The Fair Deal was a conscious effort to continue the purpose of the New Deal but not necessarily its methods.... Seeking to go beyond the New Deal while preserving its objectives, the Truman administration advocated a more sweeping and better-ordered reform agenda." FDR's third-term vice president, Henry Wallace, launched a presidential bid in 1948 with a new party. His Progressive Party platform promoted the Economic Bill of Rights. In July 1960, at the Democratic National Convention, the party nominated John F. Kennedy for president and Lyndon Johnson for vice president. In the platform, it endorsed the Economic Bill of Rights. From 1965 to 1969, the Great Society program and the War on Poverty of President Lyndon Johnson's administration built on Roosevelt's ideas, greatly expanding the federal government's role in such areas as education, employment, healthcare, housing, and civil rights. Civil rights activists A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin in 1966 drafted A “Freedom Budget” for All Americans. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., a champion of economic justice long before the historic 1963 March on Washington, lobbied for the economic rights bill in a 1968 Look magazine essay, published after his assassination. In 2004, legal scholar Cass Sunstein called for a revival of FDR's unfulfilled vision in his book, ''The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever''. In fall 2009, Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story introduced the Second Bill of Rights to moviegoers and generated national, and even international, press. In his 2020 presidential primary campaign, progressive Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders promoted a 21st Century Bill of Rights. In 2022, Prof. Harvey J. Kaye and Alan Minsky of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) launched a campaign for a modern, expanded 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights. At its 2022 convention, the Massachusetts Democratic Party endorsed the PDA proposal. In her 2024 presidential primary campaign, Democratic Party candidate Marianne Williamson featured the 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights in her platform, interviews and speeches. == See also ==