Would the New Deal get canceled by today's SCC Democratic Central Committee for being retrograde?
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Times change: friend of Opp Now Philip Davenport sends us this time capsule from the 1932 Democratic Party Platform (FDR was the presidential candidate), offering a revealing glimpse into how FDR's embrace of free markets is, politically speaking, light years away from the political discourse of today's local progressive community.
We believe that a party platform is a covenant with the people to be faithfully kept by the party when entrusted with power, and that the people are entitled to know in plain words the terms of the contract to which they are asked to subscribe. We hereby declare this to be the platform of the Democratic Party:
The Democratic Party solemnly promises by appropriate action to put into effect the principles, policies, and reforms herein advocated, and to eradicate the policies, methods, and practices herein condemned. We advocate an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus, and eliminating extravagance to accomplish a saving of not less than twenty-five per cent in the cost of the Federal Government. …
We favor maintenance of the national credit by a federal budget annually balanced on the basis of accurate executive estimates within revenues, raised by a system of taxation levied on the principle of ability to pay.
We advocate a sound currency to be preserved at all hazards. …
The removal of government from all fields of private enterprise except where necessary to develop public works and natural resources in the common interest. …
We condemn the open and covert resistance of administrative officials to every effort made by Congressional Committees to curtail the extravagant expenditures of the Government and to revoke improvident subsidies granted to favorite interests. …
And in conclusion, to accomplish these purposes and to recover economic liberty, we pledge the nominees of this convention the best efforts of a great Party whose founder announced the doctrine which guides us now in the hour of our country’s need: equal rights to all; special privilege to none.
[Editor's note: And the nominee who ran under this platform declared in his convention acceptance speech:
“As an immediate program of action we must abolish useless offices. We must eliminate actual prefunctions of government—functions, in fact, that are definitely not essential to the continuance of government. we must merge, we must consolidate subdivisions of government, and like the private citizen, give up luxuries we can no longer afford.”]
This text originally appeared in the Democratic National Platform of 1932. Read the whole thing here.
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