"We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence... 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."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

On Jan. 11, 1944, President Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union address from the White House by radio. The nation had not fully recovered from the Great Depression and was engaged in a ferocious war with D-Day still half a year away. After delivering his summons to Congress and the people to take actions he thought necessary to win the war, Roosevelt turned his attention beyond the war and to "the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever known before."

"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," Roosevelt declared.

In the midst of a terrible war with victory not yet assured, Roosevelt outlined what he meant by a second Bill of Rights, economic rights to augment the individual rights guaranteed in the initial amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The right to a useful job. The right to earn enough to provide food, clothing and recreation. The right of every business, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition. The rights to adequate health care and to protection in old age. The right to an education.

Six decades later, the South still strives for and struggles with how to carry out Roosevelt's vision. Today, we have only begun to recover from a great recession, our nation is entangled in conflict in far-away countries - and the political system shows no inclination for a new New Deal.

So why recall Roosevelt's 1944 State of the Union? Because 2011 is developing into a year of reckoning - a moment of difficult decisions that cry out for leaders focused on equity, opportunity and competitiveness in arming the nation's communities for coping with a time of disruption. North Carolina faces a $3.7 billion budget shortfall that, as in many states, may well touch off rancorous debates and brutal decisions over what to cut.

Regardless of our political persuasions, all Americans can agree on certain ideas, not least of which is Roosevelt's call for "true individual freedom." Yet too many Americans aren't truly free in the face of financial insecurity. And there's a growing population with even less hope - young adults who have dropped out of school or don't have the means or basic skills to get the education or training that qualifies them for better jobs.

Americans agree on certain beliefs. We yearn to regenerate a sense of the common good while managing the dynamics of immigration and diversity. We need to fix an education system bound by early industrial-era structures at a time when schools must prepare young people for coping with a 21st century of life-long learning. Everyone's well-being depends on eliminating profound achievement gaps, as today's Latino and African-American adolescents and young adults will become an integral core of the workforce further into this decade and the next. Across the South and the nation, a community's skill levels will determine its economic prospects.

We also must engage in regional planning and collaboration that go beyond the urban/rural/city/state boundaries that now constrain our thinking. We must figure out how to connect better with other citizens in our communities, beyond 140-character social networking and media-intensified ideological clashes.

At all levels of society, we must develop new leadership. Americans look to their president for what might be called "big leadership." But they also yearn for their governors, mayors and elected representatives to define what the shouting, power-wielding, and in-fighting are all about. However difficult our current economic moment, it is an opportunity for leaders to chart a course, not for a return to an old "normal," but toward a more prosperous society, more widely shared.

That's what FDR was trying to do. And it's what we need today.