Politics & Power Quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt

Roosevelt is doing something slyly radical here: he takes a dry budget rule and baptizes it as national identity. “Ability to pay” isn’t presented as a technocratic preference, but as the moral core of Americanness. The kicker is the absolutism. “My principle” signals ownership and resolve, then “shall be levied” gives it the force of law, not suggestion. And when he lands on “the only American principle,” he’s not describing the Constitution so much as rewriting the civic catechism in the middle of crisis.

The context matters: FDR is speaking from the pressure cooker of the Depression and the New Deal, when government legitimacy depended on proving it could tame economic chaos without sliding into oligarchy. Progressive taxation becomes a proxy for a broader argument: democracy can’t survive if wealth can buy immunity from the common burden. The subtext is a warning to concentrated fortunes: you are not a separate nation inside the nation.

It also functions as rhetorical jujitsu. Conservatives often claim “American principles” as property rights and low taxes; Roosevelt flips the script and asserts that fairness in contribution is the true patriotism. “Only” is deliberate provocation - it narrows the debate, daring opponents to explain why a society should ask more of those who have gained the most from it. In one sentence, he turns taxation into a loyalty test and redistribution into civic housekeeping.