3/4: Equality of Opportunity: A Century of Debate Hardcover – by David Davenport (Author), Gordon Lloyd (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 September 2023
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Equality-Opportunity-Century-David-Davenport/dp/0817925848
For over one hundred years, Americans have debated what equality of opportunity means and the role of government in ensuring it. Are we born with equality of opportunity, and must we thus preserve our innate legal and political freedoms? Or must it be created through laws and policies that smooth out social or economic inequalities? David Davenport and Gordon Lloyd trace the debate as it has evolved from America's founding into the twentieth century, when the question took on greater prominence. The authors use original sources and historical reinterpretations to revisit three great debates and their implications for the discussions today. First, they imagine the Founders, especially James Madison, arguing the case against the Progressives, particularly Woodrow Wilson. Next are two conspicuous public dialogues: Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's debate around the latter's New Deal; and Ronald Reagan's response to Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty. The conservative-progressive divide in this discussion has persisted, setting the stage for understanding the differing views about equality of opportunity today. The historical debates offer illuminating background for the question: Where do we go from here?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When you can't quite get the angle, take hands-free selfies with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, |
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| 0:20.3 | This is CBS Eye in the World. I'm John Patchworth, David Davenport and the |
| 0:25.0 | late Professor Gordon Lloyd's new book, A Quality of Opportunity Through the Centuries of |
| 0:29.8 | the American Experiment, The Vineyard of Liberty. And we come now to a stark declaration |
| 0:35.5 | by a man who's admired as the most successful president of the 20th century, |
| 0:41.5 | Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I learned from David that at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, |
| 0:47.7 | May of 1932. In other words, the candidate, Governor Roosevelt, says, |
| 0:54.5 | equality of opportunity no longer exists. What does that mean to him at the time, David? |
| 1:01.5 | Well, if I may say, John, when Gordon and I have worked on our books, we like to sit around |
| 1:06.2 | for a couple of three days and debate each other, and Gordon said, well, you know, |
| 1:10.3 | Franklin Roosevelt said, equality of opportunity no longer exists. And I said, no, he didn't say that. |
| 1:16.0 | Such a stark bold statement. By way of background, Herbert Hoover's wonderful essay, 1921, |
| 1:23.6 | American Individualism, sort of gave his philosophy of government, which is American Individualism, |
| 1:29.9 | not European with cast and class, but American Individualism, as he always said, coupled with |
| 1:35.4 | equality of opportunity. So Roosevelt, in this amazing 1932 Commonwealth Club campaign speech, |
| 1:42.4 | equality of opportunity as we have known it no longer exists. And to impact that a bit, |
| 1:48.8 | what he meant was, if in fact, we had equality in previous times, it was because of the availability |
| 1:56.5 | of open land and people living in an agrarian lifestyle, and he couples Individualism with |
| 2:03.1 | equality of opportunity. But now that we no longer have open land, now that people are living in |
| 2:09.0 | cities, now that we have an industrial economy run by financial titans, the common man can no |
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