Transcription
In 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed a daring new idea: a second Bill of Rights. During his State of the Union address that same year, he declared the first Bill of Rights inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness. Roosevelt felt that the American standard of living, especially following the Great Depression, was unsuited for what he envisioned as a world-class nation. Thus, the second Bill of Rights aimed at assuring the base financial needs of every American were met, allowing them to fully pursue happiness. Of course, the second Bill of Rights never manifested, but what if that changed? What if, in an alternate timeline, FDR created a second Bill of Rights?
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Now, back to the video. The second Bill of Rights, sometimes referred to as the Bill of Economic Rights, entailed eight key points: a right to work; a right to a general living wage; protections for farmers; freedom from monopolies and unfair competition at home and abroad; a right to decent housing; a right to quality medical care; a right to Social Security; and a right to education. FDR believed that true individual freedom could not be achieved without economic security and independence, and he felt that his New Deal had demonstrated the success of such concepts, hoping that in the post-war period they would be made the perpetual law of the land.
Let's suppose that following the end of the war, FDR's successor, Harry Truman, saw to the amending of the Constitution by passing through these eight hypothetical amendments as the second Bill of Rights. This would be most realistically done early on, piggybacking off the post-war high. Truman would also lose significant popularity as the years wore on, and the Republicans would briefly retake control of both houses from 1947 to 1949, making 1946 the ideal year to attempt a passing of the bill. Truman would also need the support of 36 of the then 48 states to amend the Constitution, and while realistically this might be a stretch, that had been the number of states carried by FDR in the prior election, leaving the potential for this to succeed, especially if Truman spun this as him finishing the work FDR left behind. For the sake of this scenario, we will of course assume the new Bill of Rights passes.
This would lead to the creation or expansion of new departments and agencies tailored toward meeting the needs outlined by the bill, including the Departments of Health, Education, and Welfare, which in our timeline would be established under Eisenhower, but in this timeline are three separate departments with widely expanded powers. The Social Security Administration would be absorbed into the Department of Welfare as well. The Department of Housing and Urban Development would also be established far earlier on, having manifested in our timeline during the Johnson Administration. The pre-existing Department of Labor, Federal Trade Commission, and Farmers Home Administration would also see expansion. The New Deal strategy of initiating various public works projects to create new jobs would likely continue as a means of reaching full employment, likely relating to the creation of low-cost housing projects in rural and urban areas, as well as the construction of new schools and medical facilities. Safety nets would be created for the unemployed. All states would be compelled to enact minimum wages based off the cost of living within that state. A national free health care system funded by taxpayer dollars would be established. Funding for public schools would increase, and programs would be created to train new local teachers to meet demand. Farms would see increased subsidization, with a possible return of government buybacks for unsold crops, which in turn would be distributed to the needy. And of course, the Federal Trade Commission would be given greater authority to investigate and break up monopolies.
These amendments and the institutions they created would cement a change in the American socio-political dynamic. While the original Bill of Rights had aimed at limiting the reach of the federal government, this new Bill of Rights would have expanded government power, asserting that the United States government had become more capable than ever of providing for the needs of its people, and that its people entrusted the government sufficiently to do so. And at this point in time, that would be largely true. The U.S. had come out of the war far wealthier and stronger than just about any other major power, with the exception of the Soviet Union. It wouldn't be until later that a collapse in trust for the government would result from national debates over civil rights and foreign intervention in Vietnam and abroad. Johnson, who ran on policies reminiscent of the second Bill of Rights, even carried all but six states in the election of '64, showing that even by this point in time, support for a strong provider government was widespread.
Though this being said, the response from the American public would likely still be mixed. On one hand, many citizens would have welcomed these rights as a positive step toward addressing poverty, scarcity, and lacking opportunity. But on the other hand, there likely would have been concerns about potential cost impact on the economy and the increasing role that the government would play in people's lives. This could very well serve as an earlier political schisming point for the country, with the more laissez-faire, isolationist Republicans of the Midwest growing in power from disillusioned Democrats who feared an overstepping of government power. This being said, New Dealers within the Democratic party would still hold supremacy, but that would quickly erode by the end of Truman's administration. What Johnson's administration had demonstrated in our timeline was that irreconcilable differences existed between the factions of the New Deal coalition, but until his administration, those differences weren't brought up to damaging degrees. The conservative Democrats would not support civil rights, but liberal Democrats did strongly. Liberal Democrats would not support foreign wars, but conservative Democrats did strongly. And pro-labor Democrats were a mixed bag on civil rights, opposed immigration which risked job security, and were more isolationist and protectionist than their counterparts. Johnson's policies broke all three of these factions at once, and while Truman would not do the same in this timeline, the significant loss of anti-big government voters would leave the Democrat Party highly concerned with the prospect of schisming away any of their factions.
Why this matters is because it would be under Truman that civil rights and foreign intervention policies would really kick off. The 1952 election would not pit Democrat Adlai Stevenson against Republican Dwight Eisenhower as it had in our timeline because of the realignment caused by the second Bill of Rights. Conservative Republican Robert Alphonso Taft wins the Republican nomination over New Deal Republican Dwight Eisenhower, with Truman having hurt the Democratic party standing and Stevenson offering nothing new of promise. Taft wins on the same landslide which Eisenhower had. Taft would pull back hard on American interventionism, with a key exception of Israel, which for some reason he was particularly fond of supporting. He would reduce recovery funding to Europe and may even consider withdrawing the United States from NATO, having considered it provocative against the USSR. Taft had sought to appeal to Southern voters in a way unlike prior Republican candidates and may take it upon himself to adopt anti-civil rights positions for the sake of swaying the South away from solid Democrat control. Taft's positions on the New Deal also seemed to soften as the years wore on, and while a decade earlier he may have challenged the second Bill of Rights, by the time of his presidency he may have been willing to accept and even support the amendments, having begun demonstrating sympathy for housing the poor using federal money, providing for the elderly, and even protecting laborers from abusive monopolies, even despite the Taft-Hartley Act which aimed at curbing union power. The Democrats in turn would attempt to consolidate around their labor and socially liberal factions, attempting to pry away economic liberals from the Republican party, but being unable to effectively do so without upsetting the protectionist labor faction, possibly leaving the next few years to be dominated by a Republican party sympathetic to New Deal policies and the second Bill of Rights, but far less sympathetic to foreign interventionism and civil rights, having courted the southern states much earlier than in our world.
What this would mean is that America would never enter the Vietnam War. Taft would probably break with isolationism to maintain stability in Cuba, justifying it as within the bounds of the Monroe Doctrine, preventing Castro from rising to power and averting what would become the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet influence in Europe and the Middle East would grow massively, however. Without continued American support, it's quite possible that Greece, Italy, Austria, Western Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and even France could see the rise of pro-Soviet socialist governments on the European continent. Much would rest on the wealth and might of Britain and of the strictly anti-communist ideologies of Spain and Portugal, who together with Norway and Iceland would form the last anti-communist holdouts on the continent. These circumstances driving them to adopt more authoritarian positions for the sake of preventing the rise of socialism within their borders. It's also worth mentioning that without an interventionist America, Britain would not be compelled to decolonize as rapidly as in our world and may hold on to a number of its colonies. But what do you think? What might have happened had there been a second Bill of Rights? Let us know in the comments below. USF Z, thanks for watching. Mr. Z out.