"We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out"
About this Quote
Ambition, in Roosevelt's hands, always comes with scaffolding: "construct", not "dream"; "make", not "wish". The language is industrial, almost administrative, and that's the point. FDR sold moral transformation in the vocabulary of public works, as if inclusion were something you could engineer with the same pragmatic confidence as a dam, a bridge, or an electrified rural county. The phrase "trying to construct" admits friction and failure without surrendering authority. It frames the project as ongoing, measurable, and therefore governable.
"Inclusive society" sounds warm now, but in Roosevelt's era it was a sharp political claim: the New Deal's premise that citizenship should come with a floor of security, and that government is allowed - even obligated - to build it. "No one is left out" is the emotional payload. It's not a policy memo; it's a promise designed to re-legitimize the state after collapse, to answer the Great Depression's haunting question of who counts when the market doesn't.
The subtext is also strategic. "We" is coalition language, pulling listeners into shared ownership while softening the coercive reality of sweeping federal power. "A country" is an appeal over the heads of interest groups and local gatekeepers: this is national identity under revision. It's Roosevelt's most effective rhetorical move - turning redistribution and regulation into patriotism, and making the expansion of the social contract sound less like ideology than basic belonging.
Context complicates the uplift. The New Deal often excluded Black workers, tolerated segregation, and traded justice for votes. The line works because it points to a horizon larger than its own compromises, inviting people to judge the nation by the gap between the promise and the lived reality.
"Inclusive society" sounds warm now, but in Roosevelt's era it was a sharp political claim: the New Deal's premise that citizenship should come with a floor of security, and that government is allowed - even obligated - to build it. "No one is left out" is the emotional payload. It's not a policy memo; it's a promise designed to re-legitimize the state after collapse, to answer the Great Depression's haunting question of who counts when the market doesn't.
The subtext is also strategic. "We" is coalition language, pulling listeners into shared ownership while softening the coercive reality of sweeping federal power. "A country" is an appeal over the heads of interest groups and local gatekeepers: this is national identity under revision. It's Roosevelt's most effective rhetorical move - turning redistribution and regulation into patriotism, and making the expansion of the social contract sound less like ideology than basic belonging.
Context complicates the uplift. The New Deal often excluded Black workers, tolerated segregation, and traded justice for votes. The line works because it points to a horizon larger than its own compromises, inviting people to judge the nation by the gap between the promise and the lived reality.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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