Today we invoke those same powers of government to achieve the same
objectives.
Four years of new experience have not belied our historic instinct. They
hold out the clear hope that government within communities, government
within the separate States, and government of the United States can do
the things the times require, without yielding its democracy. Our tasks
in the last four years did not force democracy to take a holiday.
Nearly all of us recognize that as intricacies of human relationships
increase, so power to govern them also must increase--power to stop
evil; power to do good. The essential democracy of our Nation and the
safety of our people depend not upon the absence of power, but upon
lodging it with those whom the people can change or continue at stated
intervals through an honest and free system of elections. The
Constitution of 1787 did not make our democracy impotent.
In fact, in these last four years, we have made the exercise of all
power more democratic; for we have begun to bring private autocratic
powers into their proper subordination to the public's government. The
legend that they were invincible--above and beyond the processes of a
democracy--has been shattered. They have been challenged and beaten.
Our progress out of the depression is obvious. But that is not all that
you and I mean by the new order of things. Our pledge was not merely to
do a patchwork job with secondhand materials.
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