Editor, The News:

A friend once asked me, “What is a liberal and why are you one, Fred?”

How our country shares its huge wealth with all of its citizens is the basic decider.

In his January 1944 State of the Union speech, Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke forcefully and eloquently about the greater meaning and higher purpose of American security in a postwar America. The principles and ideas conveyed by FDR’s words matter as much now as they did more than 60 years ago.

“We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. In our day, these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all — regardless of station, race or creed.”

His list:

•The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.

•The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation.

•The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.

•The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom, from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad.

•The right of every family to a decent home.

•The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.

•The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment.

•The right to a good education.

I’ll match this against Reaganomics. Since its inception, blue-collar America is in decline.