Rights

When the founders set up the constitution they were concerned about the federal government having too much power since they just went to war to escape the power of the king. With that in mind they wrote the Bill of Rights which limited the power of the government. They listed the powers of the government in the constitution and then proceeded to limit them with the Bill of Rights. When FDR was President he did not like these limitations and proposed a second Bill of Rights listing the things he believed that people have a right to and intimating that the federal government should provide those rights. “Necessitous men are not free men,” FDR proclaims. Since “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence,” the original Bill of Rights must be supplemented by eight rights that “spell security.” The proposed rights include the “right to a useful and remunerative job”—not the right to work, but the right to demand a job, and a well-paying one at that. “Farmers have the right to obtain “a decent living” from their toil, and businessmen have the right to be free of “unfair competition and domination by monopolies.” There are as well rights to “adequate medical care,” education, and the “right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.” He was unable to get that through the congress but since that time liberals have dreamed of such rights. President in his State of the Union address attempted to revive that dream when he said: First -- middle-class economics means helping working families feel more secure in a world of constant change. That means helping folks afford childcare, college, health care, a home, retirement -- and my budget will address each of these issues, lowering the taxes of working families and putting thousands of dollars back into their pockets each year. The President did not describe these as rights but intimated that the government should help to pay for such things.