The FDR Legacy

Today is the 65th anniversary of FDR. I have always found him to be an interesting and powerful character in our history. I suspect he may have been even more of a figure of controversy than our current President.
His initial inaugural address is particularly interesting. He describes an economy that to me at least represents a situation similar to what we face today;

"Values have shrunken to fantastic levels: taxes have risen, our ability to pay has fallen, government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income, the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade, the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side, farmers find no markets for their produce, the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.
More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment."

Maybe that seems to be overstating it a bit, but even though the market has passed 11,000 again I have to ask myself if the average American sees themselves as significantly better off than a year ago and wouldn't see some parallels to what FDR described.

I find one of the other statements in his speech intriguing as well;

"...there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency." Is it just me or are we seeing some parallels here as well?

In fact his language may have seemed bombastic at the time and equally bombastic today when he speaks of "waging war against the emergency" in fact he asked for broad executive powers to fight that "war" in a similar fashion to fighting a war against an invader or foreign enemy.

Some of the other concepts that he mentions are interdependency and personal responsibility;
" ...the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others. . .the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors." Although the context FDR was using here was that of participating in the world with other countries I can see its application on a domestic level as well.

I also find his comments about the idea that when there is no vision people perish and the recognition that " happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort."

Roosevelt was a highly controversial figure even in that time. He ushered in a level of government "participation" and social reform that didn't see anything of that magnitude until the Great Society programs under LBJ. His personal influence and control concerned the power structure to the point that they passed the 22nd Amendment to prevent a repetition of his historic election four times.

My point here isn't to suggest that his approach was correct then or now, but I am curious is to what he would think of our current situation and the "progress" we have made in the 65 years since his death. When we take a look at where we are at as as an economy, the state of disengagement and other factors is it time to declare "war" again...?