Norman Rockwell’s Freedom From Want
(from here)

First, let’s look at what is one of the relatively unnoticed portions of dreadful Mitt Romney’s 47 percent statement. Take it away Madame Wev (boldface mine):

Now, there are a lot of people talking about this, and many of them are making excellent points about how Mitt Romney is attacking his own base since most of the people who don’t pay taxes in the US live in red states, about how Mitt Romney is wrongity-wrong oh so wrong about how no one who voted/will vote for Obama pays income tax, about how Mitt Romney is unfit to be president of the nation if he holds half of it in utter contempt, about how Mitt Romney probably lost himself the election, about how Mitt Romney is a privileged jerk and a huge d-bag, and about how this election really comes down to a choice between two men with wildly disparate levels of empathy and compassion…

People will be parsing this shit for days, deconstructing in all the ways in which it underscores how terrible Mitt Romney really is.

I just need to make this observation:

MITT ROMNEY THINKS PEOPLE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO FOOD. MITT ROMNEY THINKS PEOPLE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO FOOD!!! OMFG MITT ROMNEY, CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA THINKS HUMAN BEINGS!!! WHO LIVE!!! IN THIS COUNTRY!!! AREN’T ENTITLED TO FOOD!!!

Now, let’s look at an actual president, FDR:

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want — which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear — which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor– anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

It’s pretty safe to say that if Romney and his elitist audience had been alive then, they would have despised FDR. Par for the course, but it tells you how far things have slipped ideologically that we are fighting the same damn battles.