What Makes The King Huey Long Every Man A King Rhetorical Analysis

In a national radio address on February 23, 1934, highly acclaimed politician Huey Long conveyed a powerful message through his speech “Every Man a King” in which he addressed the politically corrupt American government. The unveiling of Long’s “Share Our Wealth” plan, a program designed to provide decent standards of living to all American citizens by spreading the nation’s wealth among the people, effectively revealed his radically Populist ideologies despite lacking a definitive analysis of how redistribution would work or even how it would change the structural order of power. In fact, the concepts professed by Long alarmingly resemble authoritarianism and are supported by the inclusion of various argumentative and rhetorical tactics. Ultimately,

This confidence coalesced with Long’s adoption of such an appropriate, restrained, and fair-minded language in which audience members can individually interpret on comparable bases illustrates Long’s attempt to establish a connection to his

In the most notable of his slogans “Every Man a King,” Long refers not only to the title of the speech, but also the greater message being portrayed. For instance, the juxtaposition of the words “man” and “king” present two words with vastly different connotations. As such, Long’s advocacy for the scattering of wealth would ultimately result in no one man being greater than any other man, hence the elimination of such an elitist title as “king." It is through this slogan that Long champions the “little man” against the rich and privileged and allows his middle-class audience to fully relate to the message. Additionally, Long asserts that once every man has been deemed a king, “we will all be sovereign, and we will no longer be slaves to the wealthy.” Long speaks from the perspective of the middle-class and with an accusatory tone when addressing the wealthy, upper-class, and these tactics allow him to further relate to those of whom he is speaking. Ultimately, Long effectively combines slogans and style to not only develop the audience’s relatability with the argument itself, but also to establish his own association with the