THAT FAMOUS LEVEL PLAYING FIELD: 1/4: 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
🗓️ 8 April 2024
⏱️ 10 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?
1905 PANAMA CANAL
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an |
| 0:05.0 | on the world with John Bachelor. |
| 0:10.0 | Here's John Bachelor. |
| 0:12.0 | The founders and Equal Opportunity. |
| 0:16.2 | It is the subject of a new book that takes us |
| 0:18.6 | from the founding of the United States of America |
| 0:20.9 | to right now by David Davenport and the late Gordon Lloyd. |
| 0:26.2 | Equality of opportunity turns out to be a debating point for several hundred years, a complete |
| 0:31.3 | revelation to me. So we'll go to two independent observers |
| 0:36.2 | of the New Republic. This would be a man named Cravicor, who died in 1813, and a man named Tocville who died in 1859. |
| 0:46.6 | Father and son, think of them that way. |
| 0:49.7 | The Cravacore died just about the same time. |
| 0:52.4 | Tocville was born. And the quote from |
| 0:56.1 | to Tocville is vivid, equality of conditions. The quote from de Cravacour who worked in America as a farmer before observing this new republic |
| 1:06.4 | is more nuance from involuntary idleness rewarded by ample subsistence. In other words, the sweat of your |
| 1:17.0 | brow makes you free. David Davenport is here to help us understand what the |
| 1:22.3 | founders believed was their |
| 1:25.4 | achievement, what the conditions were around them in the 18th century that they |
| 1:30.4 | meant to found a new republic to help the people who live there get free of in Europe. |
| 1:36.4 | My child, David, a very good evening to you. What worried the founders? James Madison particularly, |
| 1:41.2 | good evening to you. |
| 1:42.6 | John, always good Good evening to you. |
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