The following is a transcript of a speech delivered on the floor of the United States Senate, by a progressive Democrat. It's too bad there isn't more support in the government as a whole for these views.
The great and grand dream of America that all men are created free and equal, endowed with the inalienable right of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness - this great dream of America, this great light, and this great hope - has almost gone out of sight in this day and time, and everybody knows it; and there is a mere candle flicker here and yonder to take the place of what the great dream of America was supposed to be.
The people of this country have fought and have struggled, trying, by one process and the other, to bring about the change that would save the American country to the ideal and purposes of America. They are met with the Democratic Party at one time and the Republican Party at another time, and both of them at another time, and nothing can be squeezed through these party organizations that goes far enough to bring the American people to a condition where they have such a thing as a livable country. We swapped the tyrant 3,000 miles away for a handful of financial slave-owning overlords who make the tyrant of Great Britain seem mild.
Much talk is indulged in to the effect that the great fortunes of the United States are sacred, that they have been built up by the honest and individual initiative, that the funds were honorably acquired by men of genius far-visioned in thought. The fact that those fortunes have been acquired and that those who have built them for the financial masters have become impoverished is a sufficient proof that they have not been regularly and honorably acquired in this country.
Even if they had been that would not alter the case. I find that the Morgan and Rockefeller groups alone held, together, 341 directorships in 112 banks, railroad, insurance, and other corporations, and one of this group made an after-dinner speech in which he said that a newspaper report had asserted that 12 men in the United States controlled the business of the Nation, and in the same speech to this group he said, "And I am one of the 12 and you the balance, and this statement is correct."
They pass laws under which people may be put in jail for utterances made in war times and other times, but you can not stifle or keep from growing, as poverty and starvation and hunger increase in this country, the spirit of the American people, if there is going to be any spirit in America at all.
Unless we provide for the redistribution of wealth in this country, the country is doomed; there is going to be no country left here very long. That may sound a little bit extravagant, but I tell you that we are not going to have this good little America here long if we do not take to redistribute the wealth of this country.
Details below the Orange Mark of Progress
Alas, this speech was not delivered in the current Senate, nor even in the current century. It was delivered on April 29th, 1932, by Huey Long of Louisiana. (Original at http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/...).
I've been listening to the audio-book version of Huey Long by T. Harry Williams, and have been very taken by Long's strong support of the poor, and in particular his ideas of eliminating the wide imbalance in distribution of wealth. What I find quite discouraging is that his words are not in the least out of place today, except that he doesn't use the term "1%". Long has a variety of less savory aspects (although in general I find this book to be very much on his side, so I suspect it's not completely impartial), but there seems to be a clear thread of economic progressivism in his platform that I would love to hear from a Senator today, especially if coupled with actual legislative results.
One of the things I've learned from this is that Long was a main figure during the passage of the Glass-Steagall bill, and in particular pushed to have FDIC insurance extend to state-chartered banks as well as federal ones. The other amazing thing I learned is that the phrase "progressive Republican" wasn't always an oxymoron.
I recommend the book and I'd like to think that we'd find somebody willing to run on this platform today, but I don't see that happening in the current version of the Democratic Party.