In this week after the momentous presidential election of 2016, I have had many conversations with people about the outcome, the nature of the national dialogue.  I’ve listened to their reflections, anguish and concern.    I’ve spoken to friends, colleagues, cab-drivers, strangers on a plane, and at a church service.   There’s a lot to reflect upon and analyses to be made – but there is a clear way forward.

Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege and occasion to meet some noted and notable liberal economists at various talks or events – Robert Reich, Joseph Stiglitz and Laura Tyson.   In the brief moment I had with each of them, I asked if they were familiar with Franklin Roosevelt’s proposal in his final state of the union address for a Second Bill of Rights.

My rationale for asking these illustrious thinkers and public servants was not to pose a trick question, but to gain a sense of the work to be done.

Robert Riech’s film  Inequality for All as does Joseph Stigletz’s work The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (2012) clarifies the drastic shift to gross economic inequality in the United States over the last 25 years.

In a talk with the director after a Berkley filming of  Inequality for All  a few years ago, Robert Riech spoke of how the film illuminated the nature of that profound shift of wealth and the impact of income inequality, but he himself noted that having diagnosed the patient what was needed was prescription for a return to health.

That way forward is not just a pushing back on the conservative or reactionary forces that led to the social and economic inequality leading to our current moment of political consequences.  They way forward requires a vision of the future.    Our Founding Fathers gave us the constitution and the first Bill of Rights which was our way forward 240 years ago.

The way forward is a legacy gift from Franklin Roosevelt. As the leader who restabilized the nation after the Great Depression, he saw that there was more to do.

In his last State of the Union address, he outlined the eight rights of a Second Bill of Rights.

• The right to useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• The right of every family to a decent home;
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment;
• The right to a good education.

This was not a theoretical set of considerations for Roosevelt, but ideas borne of experience and a realization that society was ever vulnerable to similar catastrophe without an internalized set of values that would guide the nation’s citizens, its leaders and legislators to ensure the economic safety and security of all.

Roosevelt was so ill  in January 1945, he could not deliver this state of the union in person.  He died weeks later, just before the fall of Berlin.    This Second Bill of Rights languished in the post War era, though Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society is an expression of the Second Bill in action.

I often think about what our society would be like if our leadership and policies and governance were oriented towards making this real for all citizens of the United States.  The American Healthcare Act (AHA or a.k.a Obamacare) is an example of policy based on the Second Bill of Rights.

Franklin Roosevelt left this vision for the country, but it is up to our political process to make it real.

I consider the Second Bill of Rights an answer to Dr. Reich’s question on how to forge a way forward.   If these were a set of first principles for Democrats and progressives alike, how might this energize and focus the work we need to do.