THAT FAMOUS LEVEL PLAYING FIELD: 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
🗓️ 8 April 2024
⏱️ 14 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?
1908 BRADDOCK PA
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a CBSI in the world. I'm John Batcheworth. |
| 0:08.0 | David Davenport and the late Professor Gordon Lloyd's new book, |
| 0:12.0 | A Quality of Opportunity |
| 0:13.7 | through the centuries of the American experiment, |
| 0:16.2 | the Vineyard of Liberty. |
| 0:17.9 | And we come now to a stark declaration |
| 0:20.4 | by a man who's admired as the most successful president of the 20th century, |
| 0:26.4 | Franklin Delano Roosevelt. |
| 0:28.4 | I learned from David that at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, May of 1932. In other words, the candidate |
| 0:36.8 | Governor Roosevelt says equality of opportunity no longer exists. What does that mean to him at the time David? |
| 0:46.4 | Well if I may say John when Gordon and I have worked on our books we like to sit around |
| 0:51.1 | for a couple three days of debate each other and Gordon said well you know |
| 0:55.2 | Franklin Roosevelt said equality of opportunity no longer exists and I said no he didn't say that |
| 1:00.9 | such a stark bold statement. |
| 1:04.1 | By way of background, Herbert Hoover's wonderful essay in 1921, |
| 1:08.6 | American Individualism sort of gave his philosophy of government, |
| 1:12.2 | which is American Individualism, not European with |
| 1:16.0 | cast and class, but American individualism, as he always said, coupled with equality of opportunity. |
| 1:22.4 | So Roosevelt in this amazing 1932 Commonwealth campaign speech says, |
| 1:27.0 | equality of opportunity as we have known it no longer exists. |
| 1:32.0 | And to unpack that a bit, what he meant was, |
| 1:35.0 | if in fact we had equality in previous times, |
... |
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