"Think ambitiously"

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Supreme Court embarked on a path of giving constitutional recognition to some of the rights that Roosevelt listed. In Rooseveltian fashion, the court suggested that there might be some kind of right to an education; it ruled that people could not be deprived of welfare benefits without a hearing; it said that citizens from one state could not be subject to "waiting periods" that deprived them of financial and medical help in another state. And in its most dramatic statement, the court said: "Welfare, by meeting the basic demands of subsistence, can help bring within the reach of the poor the same opportunities that are available to others to participate meaningfully in the life of the community. [Public] assistance, then, is not mere charity, but a means to 'promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.'"

By the late 1960s, respected constitutional experts thought the court might be on the verge of recognizing a right to be free from desperate conditions -- a right that captures many of the rights that Roosevelt attempted to implement. But all this was undone as a result of the election of Richard Nixon as president. Nixon promptly appointed four Supreme Court justices -- Warren Burger, William Rehnquist, Lewis Powell and Harry Blackmun -- who showed no interest in the second Bill of Rights. In a series of decisions, the new justices, joined by one or two others, rejected the claim that the Constitution protected the rights that Roosevelt listed (a vivid reminder of how much the interpretation of the Constitution depends on the outcome of presidential elections).

Roosevelt himself did not argue for constitutional change. He wanted the second bill to be part of the nation's deepest commitments, to be recognized and vindicated by the public, not by federal judges, whom he distrusted. He thought it should be seen in the same way as the Declaration of Independence -- as a statement of America's most fundamental aspirations.

The United States continues to live, at least some of the time, according Roosevelt's vision. A national consensus exists in favor of the right to education, the right to social security, the right to be free from monopoly, possibly even the right to a job. But under the influence of powerful private groups -- the "rightist reaction" against which Roosevelt specifically warned -- many of Roosevelt's hopes remain unfulfilled. In recent years, many Americans have embraced a confused and pernicious form of individualism that endorses rights of private property and freedom of contract, and respects political liberty, but distrusts government intervention and believes that people must largely fend for themselves.

Democrats so far have not adequately responded to this approach through words or deeds. They have failed to show, as Roosevelt did, that this form of so-called individualism is incoherent. As Roosevelt well knew, no one is really against government intervention, whatever they say. The wealthy, at least as much as the poor, receive help from government and from the benefits that it bestows.

It is especially unfortunate that Democrats have failed to respond to the rebirth of this confusion under the current administration. While proposing a sensible system of federal tax credits to increase health insurance coverage, for example, Bush found it necessary to make the senseless suggestion that what he had proposed was "not a government program." Time and again, conservatives claim that American culture is antagonistic to "positive rights," even though property rights themselves require "positive" action.

The result? Both at home and abroad, we have seen the rise of a false and utterly ahistorical picture of American culture and history. That picture is far from innocuous. America's self-image -- our sense of ourselves -- has a significant impact on what we actually do. We should not look at ourselves through a distorted mirror, lest we remold ourselves in its image.

Amid the war on terrorism, the problem goes even deeper. The nation could have taken the attacks of 9/11 as the basis for a new recognition of human vulnerability and of collective responsibilities to those who need help. It was the threat from abroad, after all, that led Roosevelt to a renewed emphasis on the importance of security -- with the understanding that this term included not merely protection against bullets and bombs but also against hunger, disease, illiteracy and desperate poverty. Hence Roosevelt supported a strongly progressive income tax aimed at "unreasonable profits" and offering help for those at the bottom. President Bush, on the other hand, has supported tax cuts that give disproportionate help to those at the top. Most important, Roosevelt saw the external threats as a reason to broaden the class of rights enjoyed by those at home. Bush, to say the least, has failed to do the same.

President Bush, like America as a whole, has been celebrating what is called the "Greatest Generation," the victors in World War II. But that celebration has been far too sentimental; it has betrayed the pragmatic and forward-looking character of that generation. Meeting in Boston, the birthplace of the American Revolution, the Democratic Party has a unique opportunity to reclaim Roosevelt's legacy -- to remind itself, and the nation, that the leader of the Greatest Generation had a project, one he believed to be radically incomplete. Affirming the second Bill of Rights would be an excellent place to start.

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