FDR on Social Security — “Our Plain Duty”

November 1, 2011

A film from the Pare Lorentz Center and FDR Library:

This film, produced by the Pare Lorentz Center at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, commemorates the 75th Anniversary of Social Security. The film asks the question: Is it still Our Plain Duty?

Big question.  Do we have an obligation to continue Social Security, especially now that everyone has a pension from their employer, no one has any difficulty getting access to health care, there are no homeless people in the streets, and no older Americans live and die in poverty?

2,671 views at posting

25 Comments | Economics, FDR, Franklin Roosevelt, History, New Deal, Politics, Social Security | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Howard Zinn: Empire or humanity?

November 1, 2011

We get to choose.

We can choose, if we know there are choices, and how to distinguish between them.

Do we know there are choices?  Can we distinguish?

Wish I’d seen this little film a couple of years earlier; but it’s more poignant now, perhaps, that Zinn is no longer with us.

It’s a film from Henry Holt and Metropolitan Books, made to promote Zinn’s 2008 book, A People’s History of American Empire.  This is how the film is described at the Holt site at YouTube:

Empire or Humanity?
What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me about the American Empire
by Howard Zinn
Narrated by Viggo Mortensen
Art by Mike Konopacki
Video editing by Eric Wold

To read more from Howard Zinn visit http://www.TomDispatch.com.

A serious student of U.S. history should always consider the view of Howard Zinn on an issue or period.  Teachers of history must consider Zinn’s views, agree or disagree.

2 Comments | Books, History, Imperialism, War | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell