ABSTRACT
In the run-up to the American presidential election of 1932, the Democratic candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt, delivered the following address to California’s Commonwealth Club. In it he outlines in broad strokes his plan to end the Great Depression, and offers a historical and philosophical justification for implementing that plan, which he called the New Deal. In so doing, Roosevelt offered a vision of what some call “the new liberalism”—new at least to the United States—which emphasized equality, individual freedom, and greater fairness in American life.
