ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Why we now need a TEXAS Homeowners' Bill of Rights (PDF)

Why we now need a NATIONAL Homeowners' Bill of Rights (PDF)

The Second Bill of Rights was a proposal by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his State of the Union Address on January 11, 1944. Arguing that the Constitution and Bill of Rights had "proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness," Roosevelt's remedy was to guarantee:

• A decent home
• A good education
• Adequate medical care and the opportunity to enjoy good health
• A job in the nation's industries, shops, mines or farms with an opportunity to make a living wage enough for food, clothing and recreation.
• Freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad

Roosevelt said that having these rights would guarantee American security, and that America's place in the world depends upon how far these and similar rights are carried into practice.

Excerpt from President Roosevelt's State of the Union:

“It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. 'Necessitous men are not free men.' People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed." 

Rooselvelt didn't live to push through his Second Bill of Rights, and Sunstein suggests in his seminal book "The Second Bill of Rights: FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever" that there are no "natural" rights. All rights are the product of government - defined by government, enforced by government, and protected by government.

Most people think the "right" to own property is inherent to us all, but it is actually a product of law. The law determines who owns what, defines the boundaries of that ownership, and protects that ownership with courts and police. Texas homebuilders benefit from laws that are stacked in their favor and often say they "want the government out of my business," but they very much want the government "protecting" their business. From chapter two:

"Of course many people work hard and many others do not. But the distribution of wealth is not simply a product of hard work; it depends on a coercive network of legal rights and obligations. ...[T]he laws of property, contract, and tort are social creations that allocate certain rights to some people and deny them to others. These forms of law are coercive to the extend that they prohibit people from engaging in desired activities. If homeless people lack a place to live, it is not because of God's will or nature. It is because the rules of property are invoked and enforced to evict them, if necessary by force. If employees have to work long hours and make little money, it is because of the prevailing rules of property and contract. ... Sometimes those rules disserve liberty.

Those who most demand "no" government intervention in the marketplace because of their wealth and power owe the vast majority of their wealth and power to the specific intervention of the government in the marketplace by enforcing one particular set of rules and laws of property and contract. What these "free market" advocates are really saying is that they want the rules to continue to be set and stacked in their favor, rather in ways that may better serve both society and liberty for all.

...Roosevelt believed that the real questions were the pragmatic ones: What form of intervention best promotes human interests? What form of regulation makes human life better? People in desperate conditions lack freedom."

Rather than promoting "welfare," the US Constitution was written to guarantee "Liberty." It opens with, "In Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common Defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity..."

While some may argue that progressive taxation, minimum wage laws, and right-to-unionize laws limit their "liberty," Roosevelt stressed that they would not have the wealth and power they did without laws that protected "their" rights. Indeed, as Roosevelt famously said in his 1936 acceptance speech for his second term of office:

"These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike."