A Glance Back Is Sometimes Worth More Than Looking Forward, Distorted as Forward Is by the Fog of Today.
Two truths worth remembering:
“The growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.... Among us today a concentration of private power, without equal in history, is growing.
“The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living.”
Those words were handed down to us more than eighty years ago, by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States.
And yet, here we are today, floundering our way through those very circumstances, a society torn in two by our divisions. Guilty of both transgressions laid before us by FDR, we blame the blameless neighbor next door.
God knows, we’ve had the warnings, and it’s not the Orange Man either. Whether we listen or not is up to us, but a Turkish Proverb comes to mind:
When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace turns into a circus.