FDR struggled to make a reactionary Court recognize that the government served a greater purpose than defending property. Today President Obama faces a similar battle over health care reform.

In our generation, a new idea has come to dominate thought about government, the idea that the resources of the nation can be made to produce a far higher standard of living for the masses of the people if only government is intelligent and energetic in giving the right direction to economic life. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

The hearings of the Supreme Court this week over the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act have led some commentators to compare President Obama's potential difficulties with the Supreme Court to the troubles FDR had with the Court in the mid 1930s, when some of the key provisions of the New Deal were struck down as unconstitutional. In response to the Court challenge, Roosevelt ultimately decided to pursue a court reform effort -- his famous "court-packing" scheme -- that aroused widespread opposition from both the public and those holding public office, even among members of his own party.

Most historians agree that Roosevelt's attempt to alter the Court in 1937 was both ill-conceived and badly handled. But the debate over the legal dimensions of FDR's attempt to alter the make-up of the Court -- like today's debate over the legality of Obama administration's Affordable Health Care Act -- has to a certain extent obscured the real issue that stood at the heart of the New Deal reforms: how the nation might, as FDR said, "use the agencies of government to assist in the establishment of means to provide sound and adequate protection against the vicissitudes of modern life."

Using government to pursue this goal was somewhat of a novel idea in early 20th century America. But it was not something that FDR came up with on his own. As the nation made the 19th-to-20th century transition from an agrarian to a modern industrial economy, questions about the health, safety, and living conditions of the working class -- more appropriately called the working poor -- gave rise to ever-increasing calls for social legislation to protect working Americans, including women and children, from dangerous employment practices like starvation wages and other forms of economic exploitation. The same sentiments also gave rise to a series of laws, such as the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, to protect American consumers from tainted foods and poisonous and/or useless "medicines," as well as anti-trust legislation to prevent the establishment of anti-free market monopolies that would lead to exploitative prices of key commodities and other goods and services.

Not surprisingly, all of these efforts aroused considerable opposition from conservative business interests, who frequently argued that such legislation was an infringement on their liberties. This was especially true in FDR's day, when, in the wake of the 1929-1932 financial crisis and the failure of the free market to provide adequate levels of employment to roughly 25 percent of the American workforce, the Roosevelt administration launched a series of efforts to reform the financial sector, offer employment to the jobless, and provide a basic measure of economic security to the average American through Social Security, unemployment insurance, and the right to collective bargaining.

Even before many of these measures were fully put in place, FDR anticipated what the wealthy conservative opposition would say about them. In a June, 1934 Fireside Chat on the subject, for example, FDR noted that a "few timid people, who fear progress," would try to give "strange names" to these efforts.

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Sometimes they will call it 'Fascism,' sometimes 'Communism,' sometimes 'Regimentation,' sometimes 'Socialism.'

But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical.

I believe in practical explanations and in practical policies. I believe that what we are doing today is a necessary fulfillment of what Americans have always been doing -- a fulfillment of old and tested American ideals...

All that we do seeks to fulfill the historic traditions of the American people...We are restoring confidence and well-being under the rule of the people themselves. We remain, as John Marshall said a century ago, 'emphatically and truly, a government of the people.' Our Government 'in form and in substance . . . emanates from them. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them, and for their benefits.'

What emerged from the New Deal, then, was an attempt to use government as an instrument to provide basic economic safeguards within the free enterprise system, to mitigate the worst excesses of capitalism, so that all Americans could enjoy its benefits.

As was the case in previous governmental efforts to provide a measure of social and economic protection for the average American citizen, these measures were challenged in the Supreme Court as an infringement of contract and property rights, and up until 1937 -- the year that FDR's struggle with the Court came to its head -- the Court tended to rule in favor of property. For progressives like Theodore Roosevelt, this tendency on the part of the Court was unacceptable. Indeed, roughly two decades before his cousin Franklin was sworn in as President, TR articulated his firm belief that government had a responsibility to serve as "the steward of the public welfare." As such, he insisted that the judiciary should "be interested primarily in human welfare rather than in property... just as... the representative body shall represent all the people rather than any one class or section of the people."

It was this basic idea that government had a responsibility to serve the "public welfare" that animated both the social justice legislation of the progressive era and the social and economic reform legislation of the New Deal. Hence, FDR's frustration with the inability of the Court to embrace this fundamental  -- or what he would term modern --concept was not unique and in fact had led many other public figures before him to call for some type of judicial reform.

This is not to say that FDR was correct in pursuing his so-called Court packing scheme; he was most surely wrong to do so. But we should not allow this misguided attempt to bring the Supreme Court into the modern world to mask the reasons why he -- and others -- felt such drastic measures might be necessary. In the end, of course, the Court would reverse itself and from 1937 forward would uphold every New Deal provision that came before it, including two prior pieces of legislation -- the Agricultural Adjustment Act and a minimum wage law -- that the Court had previously struck down.

In the decades that followed the New Deal, Americans came to accept and understand the idea of government as the keeper of the public welfare. But in the past two decades, this basic concept of governance has come under a sustained assault from the same special interests that fought this idea in FDR's day. As a result, President Obama's attempt to provide equal access to health care for the nearly 50 million Americans who remain uninsured through the so-called individual mandate has been attacked as an infringement on our liberties. But in embracing this point of view, the Court (should it decide to strike down the law) will have failed to take in the larger argument that the purpose of the law is to provide a means to secure a greater good for all. Viewed from this perspective, requiring all Americans to purchase health care is perhaps the most important step we can take "to provide sound and adequate protection against the vicissitudes of modern life."

David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

Today's financial giants pursue greater wealth at any cost, but in order to build a sustainable economy, we have to make life richer for all Americans.

Today, national progress and national prosperity are being held back chiefly because of selfishness on the part of a few... You know their reasoning. They say that in the competition of life for the good things of life "some people are successful because they have better brains or are more efficient; the wise, the swift and the strong are able to outstrip their fellowmen." And they say that that is nature itself and you cannot do anything about it and it is just too bad if some, the minority of people, get left behind.

It is that attitude which leads such people to give little thought, to give anything but lip service, to the one-third of our population which I have described as being ill-fed, ill-clad, and ill-housed. The majority of them say, "I am not my brother's keeper" -- and they "pass by on the other side." Most of them are honest people. Most of them consider themselves excellent citizens.

But, my friends, this Nation will never permanently get on the road to recovery if we leave the methods and processes of recovery to those people who owned -- I say "owned" -- the Government of the United States from 1921 to 1933. -Franklin D Roosevelt

The recent publication of an editorial in the New York Times by a top executive at Goldman Sachs has sparked a fierce debate about the culture of greed that has permeated Wall Street in recent years. Critics argue that the author of the article, Greg Smith, is right to point out that Wall Street has lost its moral compass and that firms like Goldman are no longer interested in their clients and couldn't care less about the long-term implications of their investment strategies. Today's Wall Street, they insist, is driven by one motive and one motive only: to make as much money as possible for themselves and for the firms they work for in the shortest possible time, whatever the consequences for the customers the company is supposed to be serving. On the other hand, the defenders of Wall Street insist that the desire to make money is nothing new -- that greed, in fact, has always been a part of the culture of the investment banking community, and that we should not be so surprised or alarmed that the people who work in the financial sector do so out of a desire to become rich.

Given the consequences of the recent financial crisis, the fact that Mr. Smith's article has provoked a debate about the culture of Wall Street seems understandable. With unemployment still over 8 percent nationwide, a good share of the population remains concerned about the possibility that the "toxic atmosphere" Mr. Smith describes on Wall Street might lead to another financial meltdown. Yes, we do have Dodd-Frank, but will this piece of legislation prove adequate to prevent a repeat scenario?

These are all legitimate questions, but given the poor state of our economy and the millions who remain unemployed or underemployed a full four years after the onset of the collapse of the financial sector, the real question that needs to be addressed concerns not just the behavior of Wall Street, but the impact that the singular pursuit of wealth in whatever field has on the nation as a whole.

Seventy-four years ago, on March 23, 1938, Franklin Roosevelt addressed this very question in a speech he made to the people of Gainesville, Georgia. Two years before, Gainesville had been devastated by a violent tornado that left over 200 people dead and destroyed much of its downtown area. But with the help of over $1 million in federal aid from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) and a number of construction projects carried out by the Public Works Administration (PWA) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA), along with the financial support, hard work, and "unselfish cooperation" of the citizens of Gainesville, the city was rebuilt. Moreover, the new Gainesville was better than the old, with less congestion, better housing, and more parks and green space for the people to enjoy.

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Taking note of this, FDR observed that the efforts of the people of Gainesville to rebuild their city touched "the interest and life of the whole Nation" because they typified the concept of citizenship "which is latent in the American character." It was true that in the wake of the destruction the city had "great needs," but these needs "were met," he said, "in accordance with the democratic principle that those needs should be filled in proportion to the ability of each individual to help."

Not one to miss a teachable moment, FDR then went on to address the larger question of economic inequality that still plagued the country. Much of this inequality, he insisted, was the result of the selfishness and greed of those at the top end of the income ladder who refused to accept or acknowledge that a society built on such vast disparity of wealth was not only undemocratic, but also economically unsustainable. These individuals, he went on:

...are the kind of people who...were saying, "Oh, yes, we want nobody to starve" but at the same time were insisting that the balancing of the budget was more important than making appropriations for relief. And when I told them that I, too wanted to balance the budget but that I put human lives ahead of dollars and handed them the book of the government estimates and asked them just where they would out the appropriations, inevitably they folded up and came back and told me, "Mr. President, that is not my business, that is yours."

FDR then went on to speak about how such attitudes affected the nation as a whole, of the consequences of economic inequality and the critical need to provide work and better wages for the "bottom third" of the U.S. population. He insisted it was vital to improve the "buying power" of the millions of unemployed and other workers "who are so under-employed or so underpaid that the burden of their poverty affects the little business man and the big business man and the millionaire himself." Moreover, he also reminded his listeners that better buying power meant not just greater purchases in hard-hit industries but also "many other...things -- better schools, better health and hospitals, better highways."

In short, FDR insisted that the best way to work our way out of the Great Depression and sustain capitalism was to make sure it worked for all our citizens, rich and poor alike. Happily, the actions of the people of Georgia in the wake of tragedy had convinced him that more and more Americans from workers and farmers to bankers and businessmen were coming to see "that the continuation of the American system calls for the elimination of special privilege, the dissemination of the whole truth, and participation in prosperity by the people at the bottom of the ladder, as well as those in the middle and those at the top."

It is certainly not a bad thing that Mr. Smith's article about the culture of Wall Street has stirred up a debate about the values and motivations of the individuals working in the financial sector. But in a society where the same newspaper has recently reported that the number of poor and near poor in America -- those living "either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it" -- has now reached approximately 100 million Americans, one wonders why more people are not focused on the "one third of a nation" that, as in FDR's day, sadly finds itself "ill-housed, ill-clad, ill nourished." Would an editorial bemoaning the increasing level of poverty in America have sparked the same amount of interest?

Viewed from this perspective, the culture on Wall Street, with its huge bonuses and drive for ever-increasing wealth no matter what the consequences for the client, becomes all the more disturbing. Not so much for what it says about the financial sector, but rather for what it says about the state of the country as a whole. The pursuit of wealth for wealth's sake is a poor foundation upon which to build a modern economy well-suited for the 21st century. Surely FDR is right when he reminds us that it is better for us to become "our brother's keeper" than to "pass on to the other side."

David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

FDR knew America's promise of democracy and economic opportunity meant nothing if it didn't include the average worker.

In this country we insist, as an essential of the American way of life, that the employer-employee relationship should be one between free men and equals. We refuse to regard those who work with hand or brain as different from or inferior to those who live from their property. We insist that labor is entitled to as much respect as property. But our workers with hand and brain deserve more than respect for their labor. They deserve practical protection in the opportunity to use their labor at a return adequate to support them at a decent and constantly rising standard of living, and to accumulate a margin of security against the inevitable vicissitudes of life. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

During this election campaign, a good deal of criticism has been hurled at President Obama from his conservative opponents for his support of the so-called "Buffet Rule" -- his insistence that individuals making $1 million a year or more in annual income should pay a minimum tax of 30 percent. Republican leaders such as Congressman Paul Ryan and Senator Mitch McConnell have even gone so far as to label the president's proposal nothing less than "class warfare" -- an attack on the wealthy "job creators" they see as a vital to the U.S. economic recovery.

Three quarters of a century ago, Franklin Roosevelt faced similar criticism and a similar problem. In trying to come to grips with the worst economic crisis in our history at a time when the nation lacked the adequate state apparatus and institutions to deal with massive unemployment and poverty, FDR launched a series of government initiatives designed to mitigate the worst excesses of unfettered capitalism and to provide the average American with the one thing he or she needed above all else: economic security.

In this sense, FDR attacked the problem of economic decline from the opposite end of the spectrum under discussion today. For him, the goal was not to see to it that the free enterprise system delivered vast sums of wealth to those at the top of the economic pyramid, today's so-called "job creators," but rather to ensure that the average worker was paid a wage decent enough to enable him or her to be able to purchase the myriad goods and services the U.S. economy was capable of producing. This would contribute to the overall health of the economy and was in his view a far more reliable means of generating sustainable economic growth. This growth would not only benefit the average worker, but also his employer, as the increased purchasing power of the lower and middle classes would also generate greater profits for those in a position of ownership.

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As is the case today, FDR's focus on trying to generate greater economic opportunity and equality through progressive taxation and government initiatives aimed at putting people to work was labeled "class warfare" by his critics. The president, they said, was taking the nation down the path of "socialism" or "fascism," pitting capital against labor and dividing the country along the lines of rich and poor. But for Roosevelt, nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, his goal was not to try to initiate class warfare, but to eliminate it. As he once observed in one of his fireside chats on the subject:

There are those who fail to read both the signs of the times and American history. They would try to refuse the worker any effective power to bargain collectively, to earn a decent livelihood and to acquire security. It is those short-sighted ones, not labor, who threaten this country with that class dissension which in other countries has led to dictatorship and the establishment of fear and hatred as the dominant emotions in human life.

All American workers, brain workers and manual workers alike, and all the rest of us whose well-being depends on theirs, know that our needs are one in building an orderly economic democracy in which all can profit and in which all can be secure from the kind of faulty economic direction which brought us to the brink of common ruin seven years ago.

For Roosevelt, then, there was "no cleavage between white collar workers and manual workers," or between "artists and artisans, musicians and mechanics, lawyers and accountants and architects and miners." To insist on such was to misunderstand and challenge the "whole concept of American democracy," which, he believed, above all else was based on the concept that it was "our determination to achieve an economic freedom for the average man which will give his political freedom reality."

Given all of this, one would suspect that FDR would heartily agree with Warren Buffett and President Obama's assertion that taxing a multibillionaire like Mr. Buffett at a lower rate than his secretary is not only ridiculous and unsustainable, but also undemocratic. It also helps to generate and foster the one thing that both President Obama and President Roosevelt have argued is antithetical to American democracy: the creation of a class distinction between the privileged few and the rest of us.

David Woolner is a Senior Fellow and Hyde Park Resident Historian for the Roosevelt Institute. He is currently writing a book entitled Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and the Search for Anglo-American Cooperation, 1933-1938.

At a time when government support for education is under attack, a reminder in FDR's own words that the progress of our nation depends on a well-educated citizenry.

Today, many argue that the government can't afford some of its most fundamental tasks, including support for education. Some politicians have even gone so far as to question the very idea of public education. But President Franklin Roosevelt knew that mass education requires government support and that cutting such support in times of economic need is penny wise and pound foolish, since a prosperous economy and decent society require widespread education.

On February 22, 1936, President Roosevelt traveled to Philadelphia, PA, where he received an honorary degree from Temple University. Roosevelt used the occasion to emphasize the critical role of government in advancing education. He pointed out that it was altogether fitting that the day was George Washington's birthday, since "What President Washington pointed out on many occasions and in many practical ways was that a broad and cosmopolitan education in every stratum of society is a necessary factor in any free Nation governed through a democratic system."

Roosevelt went on to add that the progress of a nation cannot and should not be measured solely in material terms. Instead, a nation must also look to progress in "the things of the mind." He pointed to the great advances in education over the previous 50 years and how his administration had worked to ensure that the burden of the Great Depression "should not include the denial of educational opportunities for those who were willing and ready to use them to advantage."

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Increasing levels of education, according to Roosevelt, "has given to this country a population more literate, more cultured, in the best sense of the word, more aware of the complexities of modern civilized life than ever before in our history."

Roosevelt then described the timeless qualities of a true education. First is "a sense of fair play among men. As education grows, men come to recognize their essential dependence one upon the other." Second, true education instills "a sense of equality among men when they are dealing with the things of the mind. Inequality may linger in the world of material things, but great music, great literature, great art and the wonders of science are, and should be, open to all."

Finally, and most importantly, true education requires the unfettered pursuit of knowledge and the truth. At a time when Nazi storm troopers burned books and banned "degenerate" art, and Stalinist commissars sought to bend biology to the will of the state, Roosevelt declared, "No group and no Government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned. The truth is found when men are free to pursue it."

Though spoken over 75 years ago, Roosevelt's words still hold true. Today we must also confront challenges to sound education, as some still seek to impose their own agendas on the pursuit of knowledge. Most importantly, Roosevelt understood that the essence of democracy is a free people engaged in the search for truth and understanding in an effort to make a better world for themselves and their children. As Roosevelt said, quoting Kipling, "On your own heads, in your own hands, the sin and the saving lies!"

Philip Klinkner is the James S. Sherman Professor of Government at Hamilton College. He is the author (with Rogers Smith) of The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America and he is currently writing a book on the 1936 election.