New Deal Dbq

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The chaos set out by the Great Depression on the American people set the stage for radical reform of the variety brought upon by Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration and the New Deal. However, this administration ran into the issue that it is difficult to give without the power to do so. The thing the Roosevelt administration was trying to give the American people was a stable economy which would drastically improve the Positive Liberty of the populace, yet to do so it would need to take power away and vest it in the hands of the federal Government. In doing so, FDR’s New Deal Liberalism would balance the ideas of Positive and Negative liberty by slightly lowering the Negative liberty of the states and corporations in order to greatly advance …show more content…

The act codified workers rights to form unions, meaning that the Government was further digging its heel into the big businesses, cutting off their ability to bust these unions (The American YAWP ch23). This act and various similar actions would lead to Roosevelt's belief that, “We are moving toward an era of good feeling.”(Second Inaugural Address of FDR) Further cuts into Negative Liberty come at minor expense of the states. The grants-in-aid system largely set up by the new deal plays to the effect of removing some of the free will of the states by heavily coercing the states to do the bidding of the federal government. With this again, the New Deal Liberalism had to lower the level of Negative liberty in order to raise to Positive liberty of the many. At the very end of his inauguration speech, Roosevelt makes the comment that, “out of the confusion of many voices rises an understanding of dominant public need. Then political leadership can voice common ideals, and aid in their realization.”(Second Inaugural Address of FDR) In this he is stating what can be seen as the core formula for balancing Positive and Negative liberty which is at the core of the New Deal, this is that when the peoples suffering is heard the government must listen and create more rules and regulations in order to grant the people freedom to

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