A Quote by Theodore C. Sorensen

I think Democrats made a mistake running away from liberalism. Liberalism, uh, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John and Robert Kennedy - that's what the Democratic party ought to reach for.
If Obama's vision of the public sector is socialism, then so too were the visions of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.
Since the emergence of the Republican Party, only two Democratic presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, have been followed by Democrats, and both FDR and JFK died in office, so their successors ran as incumbents.
[Senators John Kerry & John Edwards] have risen high in Democratic polls with a brand of class resentment and soak-the-rich rhetoric rooted in the old-fashioned liberalism of Ted Kennedy.
Well, you have to remember that until 1948, when Hubert Humphrey and others forced the Democratic Party to adopt a new policy on civil rights, the Democratic Party was the party of the old solid South. All of the racists, all of the Cottonhead Smith types and so on were Democrats, allies of Franklin Roosevelt - because of their seniority - of all the major committees of the Congress.
My father's political heroes were Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
One of the biggest differences between liberalism and conservativism these days, is that conservativism isn't what conservativism should be, and liberalism is what liberalism ought not to be.
The greatest leaders in fighting for an integrated America in the twentieth century were in the Democratic Party. The fact is, it was the liberal wing of the Democratic Party that ended segregation. The fact is that it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who gave hope to a nation that was in despair and could have slid into dictatorship. And the fact is, every Republican has much to learn from studying what the Democrats did right.
What happens when we examine the claims made for Western liberalism as a universalizing ideology of tolerance, human dignity, equality, and compassion is the fact that the patron saint of modern liberalism, John Stuart Mill, thought that barbarian peoples like the Indians were unfit for self-rule.
The people I really most admire are Robert Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. If you know someone, it is very hard to revere them.
Liberalism is unsustainable. When things go wrong in liberalism they pile more liberalism on top. Pretty good example of what's wrong with the US budget, US healthcare. Liberalism breaks it. Government breaks it. They pile more liberalism on top of it until it eventually implodes, like Obamacare is going to, or like Social Security is going to. All of these things, they're not sustainable, because liberalism isn't.
It is essential for politicians to make a connection with us, as Franklin Roosevelt did, as Teddy Roosevelt did, as John F. Kennedy did, as Ronald Reagan did.
For liberalism is a delicate thing. It encompasses so much -- constitutional government, democratic elections, freedom of worship, civil rights, free trade -- that we think of it as timeless and universal. But liberalism came into being in a real place and time, like a flame it has wavered in various eras, and it can be snuffed out.
The more people that understand and are made able to spot liberalism, and then the more people are able to associate liberalism with the problems in their lives, the political problems, the economic problems, the more people can be conditioned and educated to understand that liberalism is the problem, coupled with the ability to spot it, would be the fastest way to eradicate it. It would be really helpful if we had a Republican Party engaged in this.
Admittedly, no Republican can get elected statewide in California anymore, but nor can what we think of as, nationally, the Democratic Party. There are no Joe Bidens running; it is not working-class Democrats vs. liberal Democrats, or whatever their division is these days. It is Hispanic Democrats vs. Asian Democrats.
I think I know a lot of fake two-faced Ivy League liberals, and I am constantly testing them to see if their liberalism is a conversational liberalism, one that depends solely on what will fly at a party. And I can tell when stuff like this happens, I swear to God, they are tomorrow's conservatives.
Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, others, knew how to lead. They knew how to ask the American people for the right things.
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