poor and weak and a general PACIFISM. Up to the 1980s
Romantic trends have appeared in the United States,
such as the movement to rural communes in the
1960s, the hippie movement, the NEW AGE MOVEMENT,
and strains of the anti-(Vietnam) War movement.
Whenever an appeal is made to nonrational emotion,
spontaneous feelings, caring, sharing, and abstract lov-
ing, a Romantic sentiment is expressed: The assump-
tion that the coming-out of people’s “inner” childlike
natures will make the world a peaceful, happy place
reflects a Romantic sensibility, and the view that
humans are naturally good but are corrupted by soci-
ety (education, PROPERTY, politics) corresponds to a
Romantic perspective. The solution, then, is either to
reject the Modern, rational, technological world or to
reform it along Romantic lines. But no uniform
Romantic political program exists (or could exist with-
out violating natural, individual spontaneity), so
Romanticism remains a minor tendency in various
social movements and figures, rather than a systematic
philosophy.
Further Readings
Halsted, J. B., ed. Romanticism.New York: Walker, 1969.
Reiss, H., ed. The Political Thought of the German Romantics,
1793–1815.Oxford, Eng.: Blackwell, 1955.
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882–1945)
U.S. politician and president (1932–1945)
In AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT, Roosevelt (FDR) rep-
resents the triumph of WELFARE-STATELiberalism begun
by Woodrow WILSON: the use of the central, federal
government to regulate the economy, provide exten-
sive social services (public employment, welfare, hous-
ing, retirement pensions, health care), and protect civil
rights. Employing the economic theory of John May-
nard KEYNES, Roosevelt used the federal government‘s
borrowing and spending power to manage the econ-
omy during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The philosophical rationale for FDR’s DEMOCRATIC
PARTYLiberalism (see the NEW DEAL) was that big gov-
ernment was needed to protect the people from big
business. National state power could be used by ordi-
nary people to force large corporations to serve the
public interest, assist the poor and underprivileged,
and preserve individual RIGHTS. Following on the PRO-
GRESSIVEwelfare politics of President Woodrow Wil-
son, Franklin Roosevelt saw a positive role for the
federal government in promoting social EQUALITYand
JUSTICE. The new Democratic Party coalition of the
1930s (Liberals, SOCIALISTS, labor unions, minorities,
and Jewish Americans) reflected this LEFT slant of
FDR’s politics. As he stated in his campaign address of
1936: “Our job was to preserve the American ideal of
economic as well as political democracy against the
abuse of concentration of economic power... .” In
this, he claimed to be in the democratic tradition of
Thomas JEFFERSON, despite the weakening of STATES
RIGHTScaused by his policies.
Democratic Party liberalism fundamentally changed
the U.S. national government’s role in the economy
and individual citizens’ lives. It dominated U.S. poli-
tics until the 1980s when President Ronald REAGAN’s
CONSERVATIVE policies challenged its premises and
shifted more state programs to business or local gov-
ernments. Roosevelt’s Liberal welfare-state policies
continue in the United States through federal aid to
education, the arts, public housing, Social Security,
and health care, but contemporary public perception
by some of Liberal politics as causing high taxes,
wasteful federal programs, economic inflation, and
ineffective policy has diminished the prestige of Roo-
sevelt’s vision. Its “mixed economy” of private-enter-
prise CAPITALISM and public regulation, however, is
now the pattern for Western democracies.Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–1778) French
political philosopher
Considered both a FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENTand ROMAN-
TICthinker, Rousseau presented a distinctive French
LIBERALISM, influencing the French Revolution of 1789,
FASCISM, COMMUNISM, and COMMUNITARIANthought.
Born in Geneva, Switzerland, he spent most of his
life in Paris and wrote on education, music, and drama
as well as politics. Raised in Protestant Christianity, he
converted briefly to Catholicism and then to a deistic
CIVIL RELIGION.
Rousseau modifies the stark INDIVIDUALISMof John
LOCKE’s liberalism by conceiving of HUMAN NATUREas
both private and public, motivated by self-interest and
social sympathy. Human empathy for others’ suffering
makes them altruistic and caring. In its natural, child-
like innocence, humankind is sympathetic to others’
needs and is kindly, but this natural goodness is soon
corrupted, for Rousseau, by the vanity, pride, and com-
petition of CIVIL SOCIETY. So, like the later sociology264 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano