09/03/2018
Seventy-seven years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered a Labor Day radio address.
“In times of national emergency,” he told the nation, “one fact is brought home to us, clearly and decisively — the fact that all of our rights are interdependent.”
It was three months before the United States entered the Second World War. “The right of freedom of worship would mean nothing without freedom of speech,” Roosevelt continued. “And the rights of free labor as we know them today could not survive without the rights of free enterprise.
“That is the indestructible bond that is between us — between all of us Americans: interdependence of interests, privileges, opportunities, responsibilities — interdependence of rights.
“That is what unites us — men and women of all sections, of all races, of all faiths, of all occupations, of all political beliefs. That is why we have been able to defy and frustrate the enemies who believed that they could divide us and conquer us from within.”
— Sam Sifton (NYT)