A few timid people who fear progress have tried to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it fascism. Sometimes communism. ... Sometimes socialism. But in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical, something that is really very simple and very practical. I believe in practical explanations and in practical policies. I believe what we are doing today is a necessary fulfillment of what Americans have always been doing, a fulfilment of old and tested American ideals.<
(links are to contemporary invocations of each charge)
Related: An interview with Michael Hiltzik, author of "The New Deal: A Modern History". Turns out that FDR and his policies are frequently misrepresented by those on the right and the left.
