Kaye essay on new Moore film, FDR’s Four Freedoms

UW-Green Bay faculty member Harvey Kaye, Social Change and Development, is author of an essay published in the national political-issues blog The Daily Beast. Kaye notes that Michael Moore’s new film, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” references FDR in challenging Americans on what Moore sees as their passivity in the face of unchecked corporate greed. The film includes rarely seen footage of Roosevelt’s 1944 call for a “Second Bill of Rights” — a follow-up to his concept of “The Four Freedoms” — which notably included a demand for a more equitable distribution of the national income. Kaye, author of a forthcoming book on Roosevelt and The Four Freedoms, shares perspective on how the alliance of New Deal progressives and organized labor was critical to FDR’s vision of a post-war campaign for a more social-democratic United States. (FDR died in 1945, only months into his fourth term.) Kaye says Roosevelt’s commitment to economic justice shared important parallels with the revolutionary tradition of America’s founders. Read the essay.