But Sanders mostly leaned heavily on FDR, citing the president’s 1944 State of the Union Address in which he called for a second Bill of Rights.
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During his speech, Sanders invoked the names of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as well as civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr. While Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, and Lebanon have accepted their responsibilities for taking in Syrian refugees, other countries in the region have done nothing or very little. So, to display such a populist message to an elite university could sound odd, but surprising Bernie Sanders received so much applauses.
There was no shortage of enthusiastic Sanders supporters at the event.
Well, that wasn’t the big theme of the speech but Sanders no doubt liked the line and the distinction it draws between his campaign and that of his chief opponent who is, also, the frontrunner. Still, gray skies weren’t much of a deterrent. “And by the way, nearly everything he proposed, nearly every program, every idea he introduced was called ‘socialist'”. When that happens everything that I talk about will be passed.
Sanders began his speech-the text of the prepared remarks is here-with a throwback to Franklin Roosevelt. That was the icing on top.
While waiting for the speech to start, students wondered aloud why the senator settled on Georgetown to deliver what could be called a socialist manifesto.
So, does Bernie Sanders, the self-described Democratic Socialist, want to nationalize businesses if he becomes president?
According to The Atlantic, Sanders wanted to praise Pope Francis for offering up critiques of unrestrained capitalism, and made sure to mention the pontiff on Thursday. “We must not accept a nation in which billionaires compete as to the size of their super-yachts, while children in America go hungry and veterans sleep out on the streets”.
On his official senate website, Bernie Sanders argues that cuts would be devastating to veterans and surviving spouses, especially when those cuts would come in order to pay for increased defense spending. “Democratic socialism means that we must reform a political system in America today which is not only grossly unfair but, in many respects, corrupt”.
“We must create an organization like Nato to confront the security threats of the 21st century – an organisation that emphasizes cooperation and collaboration to defeat the rise of violent extremism and importantly to address the root causes underlying these brutal acts”, said Sanders in perhaps the most specific policy suggestion.
“Democratic socialism, to me, does not just mean that we must create a nation of economic and social justice”.
Coining a “socialism” anything has always been an epithet in American politics, especially for Democrats. Sanders noted that “many other countries … have done a far better job than we have in protecting the needs of their working families, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor”.
Sanders even wanted everybody to know that his ideology has not been imported. The idea links economic security to the concept of freedom. “But at the same time, we will rebuild the disappearing middle class of this country”.
Half of the voters surveyed said they would not vote for a socialist. Sanders’ asks for reforms that many European democracies have accomplished.
“I don’t want America to succumb to the notion that there’s anything good about socialism”, Kentucky Sen.
FILE – Hillary Clinton waves as Bernie Sanders, left, and Martin O’Malley prepare before a Democratic presidential primary debate, November 14, 2015, in Des Moines, Iowa. “That’s not why I’m running for president”. “But we are not Denmark …” The goals are in keeping with the American tradition of such programs as Social Security and Medicare, he said, and the rest of the industrialized world operates that way.
It won’t be easy for Sanders to reclaim a word so long reviled in American culture. Sanders and his staff have been careful to point out he is a “democratic socialist”, in the vein of many European politicians, and not a full-bore “socialist”.
But many of Sanders’s fans don’t agree.
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The next time you hear me attacked as a socialist-like tomorrow-remember this: I don’t believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families of this country who produce the wealth of this country deserve a decent standard of living and that their incomes should go up, not down.
