FDR's First Inaugural Address Themes
Warfare
Students of history, given the gift of hindsight, can look back at the boom of the 1920s and depression of the 1930s as little more than a time-out between two brutal global conflicts. But in many...
Greed
There are many culprits to blame for the Great Depression that tanked the global economy in 1929. Some blamed politicians, some themselves. But for the broke and hungry and desperate, there was rea...
American Exceptionalism
For years, our foreign policy has been built on the premise of American exceptionalism—that by our very principles and beliefs, we deserve to shape the world as we see fit. This was as true in Ro...
Man and the Natural World
In the years after Thomas Jefferson made his killer real-estate deal and people played the Oregon Trail IRL, the United States had tons of resources at its disposal. And while railroads crisscrosse...
Fear
The atmosphere surrounding Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1933 inaugural address was clouded by fear. The banking industry had been drained by panicked people, and state by state the system began to s...