Liberalism - The Scatterlings

Franklin Delano Roosevelt likely oversaw the greatest liberal renaissance in recent history.  Prior to his first election he referred to himself as a liberal waiting for the opportunity to set the country aright.  Everyone presumed he meant the economic fiasco that had a stranglehold on the United States; they were wrong.  The nation was burdened by debt and deficit that was the legacy of a capitalist regime detached in law, regulation and reality from the true suffering of the country.Traveling across the nation by rail, he witnessed a side of America no one realized he really perceived.  He was elitist by birth and station, yet was shrewd enough to understand that the conservative Republican penchant for dividing the country couldn’t be sustained.  The breadlines, overcrowded hospital wards, unimaginable personal debt loads and the sheer waste of humanity visible in the unending unemployment lines shook him to his core.  He was a member of the fashionable elite, yes, but he was also a liberal and it was that distinction that permitted him to see parts of America the ruling elites had either forgotten or overlooked.When he became president, everyone wanted the economy righted with haste but his sharp intellect looked farther afield.  In one of his great speeches he reminded the country that he desired to not just end the crisis, but to be sure that the recovery would be one in which “no one would be left out.”  He reminded citizens that America’s great wealth had come at a steep price – millions who had never caught the wave of prosperity and were in the grips of destitution and isolation.The Depression largely behind him, he acknowledged on January 20, 1937 that the nation was on its way to economic health once again.  But summoning up the memories of all he witnessed on that earlier cross-country train journey, he stated something no one expected:  “These symptoms of returning prosperity may become portents of disaster,” he warned.  “I see one-third of a nation ill housed, ill clad, ill nourished.”  Roosevelt wasn’t referring to the economic victims of the Depression but rather the scatterlings – the accumulated social and human “ills” that had burgeoned during decades of capitalism without a conscience and industry that had led to isolation of millions.  They were the flotsam and jetsam of their age – floating wreckage of a brutal greed and an unfeeling politics.And it was then that Roosevelt uttered the phrase that became the clarion liberal call for the next generation:  “Americans have a rendezvous with destiny.”  His reforms reached out to the people that prosperity had forgotten, the wealthy had vanquished, and the political order had failed to acknowledge.There are similarities to our present Canadian situation in all of this.  Our private debt is the highest in the world.  Despite the occasional “one-off” interventions by the current government, our aboriginal people are telling us that they feel more detached than ever.  The gap between the rich and the poor is widening again.  Child poverty remains firmly entrenched in this land of supposed sound economy.  Pay equity for women is moving farther away.  Farmers are going under.  Small business owners have been dwarfed by the large conglomerates and receive little notice. The new jobs of today are merely the part-time minimum wage jobs of subsistence that look nothing like the healthy forms of employment from just a few years ago.  Pensions are struggling.  Healthcare, especially for our seniors, is nearing system failure.  And perhaps worst of all, the natural order of this marvelous planet is repeatedly plundered without even a pulse of concern from Ottawa.Stephen Harper has said that he will half the deficit by 2013.  That’s some $20-30 billion taken out of the economy.  There’s little chance we’ll grow out of it, as the economy remains stagnant  It will come out of programming and, as other governments did in similar situations, will be carried out on the backs of the most vulnerable.Any new liberal vision for this pivotal moment in time must confront what Roosevelt had the courage to challenge in his generation.  It’s not enough to restore the books or to bring back prosperity, for those things had already left strewn wreckage in their wake.  Do we want the kind of Canada that is indeed inclusive and empowering, or will we, once again, tolerate our own ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-nourished?  No economy is healthy that leaves such a legacy.This is the true liberal vision for tomorrow – not the version that emphasizes individual right for wealth, but for individual responsibility to “self-organize” and ensure no one is left behind.  This is not liberalism turning left or right, but upside-down – back to communities in a manner that spreads our citizen responsibility outward to include all regions and people of this country.  Let’s no longer be enticed by a nation wherein two-thirds are doing well – that is not liberalism but complacency.  The liberalism that matters in this moment is the one that seeks a kind of prosperity through innovation, sound economics, and a committed social justice that will summon the scatterlings from across this land and tell them their time has finally arrived.