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US Presidential Inaugural Addresses by Various
page 318 of 440 (72%)
In fact, in these last four years, we have made the exercise of all
power more democratic; for we have begun to bring private autocratic
powers into their proper subordination to the public's government. The
legend that they were invincible - above and beyond the processes of a
democracy - has been shattered. They have been challenged and beaten.

Our progress out of the depression is obvious. But that is not all that
you and I mean by the new order of things. Our pledge was not merely to
do a patchwork job with secondhand materials. By using the new
materials of social justice we have undertaken to erect on the old
foundations a more enduring structure for the better use of future
generations.

In that purpose we have been helped by achievements of mind and spirit.
Old truths have been relearned; untruths have been unlearned. We have
always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now
that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose
builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the
long run economic morality pays. We are beginning to wipe out the line
that divides the practical from the ideal; and in so doing we are
fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a
morally better world.

This new understanding undermines the old admiration of worldly success
as such. We are beginning to abandon our tolerance of the abuse of
power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life.

In this process evil things formerly accepted will not be so easily
condoned. Hard-headedness will not so easily excuse hardheartedness. We
are moving toward an era of good feeling. But we realize that there can
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