The Four Freedoms – a short primer

Although the 1939 World’s Fair intruduced similar freedoms (religion, speech, assembly, press) as its theme, Franklin Delano Roosevelt set out the better-known Four Freedoms in his January 1941 State of the Union speech to Congress. They consisted of freedom of speech and expression; freedom of worship; freedom from want; and freedom from fear. He believed that everyone, everywhere in the world, had a right to the full measure of each of them, though they have been rather inconsistently implemented at various times in the United States.

At the time the Four Freedoms speech was delivered, the world was plunging into another world war, though the US was not technically involved until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941. Roosevelt was concerned with both the continuation of recovery from the Great Depression (freedom from want) and the growing menace from abroad (freedom from fear). Framing the other two freedoms (speech and expression, and that of worship) with want and fear as a means of bringing home the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. As a whole, they speak fundamentally to the gift of democracy as practiced at its highest in our republic. They are both aspirational and concrete.

This speech overwhelmingly was a call to the Congress and the nation to not only prepare for a fight, but, from that moment on, to ramp up all means of production to supply the world with the means to fight oppressive, dictatorial regimes like those of Germany and Italy in Europe. The Freedoms only appear near the end of the speech, as a rallying cry to strive for and defend a way of life that could slip from the grasp without vigilance, and perhaps even in the waging of a righteous war of our own.

In Roosevelt’s words,

 

“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 worldwide 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.

“To that new order we oppose the greater conception—the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.”

 

He further elaborated that, “there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are: Equality of opportunity for youth and for others; Jobs for those who can work; Security for those who need it; The ending of special privilege for the few; The preservation of civil liberties for all; and, The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.” He posited that we had a “social economy” in out country that made reasonable demands to the universal human compact including “old age pensions and unemployment insurance… opportunities for adequate medical care.. and a better system whereby those who need and want gainful employment can obtain it.”

Interestingly, Eleanor Roosevelt went on to chair the UN committee that penned the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Her late husband’s Four Freedoms were incorporated wholesale into that iteration.

FDR’s words raised the hue and cry for war materiel production in order to assist our allies, and, if needs must, supply our own materiel requirements in an ultimate fight against tyranny and fascism. In the process, he called us to face our neighbor as ourselves and care for one another – even if the other is a continent or half a world away. It’s a travesty that each of these freedoms and gallant expressions of true fidelity to all our fellow human beings is being so deliberately trampled around us in this formerly glorious nation.

We can do better. We must do better. We will do better.

It begins with us.