Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech on 'The Four Freedoms'

An historical moment to consider in our current times and contentions

While the context is different now from what it was on that long-ago evening when President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to the American people as well as the rest of the world on the battles of conquest taking place in Europe and Asia, coupled with the ‘four freedoms’ he felt every human being deserves, there are still wars of aggression, discrimination against minorities including efforts to demonize them, attempts to suppress fundamental political rights like voting, the jailing of dissidents in many parts of the world, and the stoking of fear and division for partisan gain.

On the macro level of what’s going on in the world and with the current US Presidential campaign, there’s little I can say or do that will have much of an impact. The word ‘impotent’ comes to mind. Or, at least, that’s how I feel. But, that said, I know I can’t stand idly by while events go rushing by. The term ‘moral imperative’ comes to mind.

The written word, used to hopefully put forth a coherent and convincing argument to support a view, along with the examples pulled from history are what I seek to bring to table. A meager fare to be sure, but maybe enough to provide a nourishing thought or buttress a flagging spirit in a reader or two.

So, here’s an historical moment to consider, both for what it meant then and what it might offer today, in our current times and contentions.

January 6, 1941

As the war in Europe intensified and America’s allies lobbied for increased assistance, FDR used his eighth State of the Union address to try and move the nation away from its long-held isolationist stance. Specifically, he stressed the importance of increasing arms production—what he called America's “arsenal of democracy”—and moving forward with his “Lend Lease” program, to supply Allies with U.S. munitions. He argued his case on moral grounds, underlining the global threat to democracy and reaffirming "the supremacy of human rights everywhere." He declared that people of all nations should enjoy the four basic freedoms that Americans take for granted.

"I suppose that every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being directly assailed in every part of the world—assailed either by arms or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda by those who seek to destroy unity and promote discord in nations that are still at peace. During 16 long months this assault has blotted out the whole pattern of democratic life in an appalling number of independent nations, great and small. And the assailants are still on the march, threatening other nations, great and small.

Therefore, as your President, performing my constitutional duty to "give to the Congress information of the state of the union," I find it unhappily necessary to report that the future and the safety of our country and of our democracy are overwhelmingly involved in events far beyond our borders….

I…ask this Congress for authority and for funds sufficient to manufacture additional munitions and war supplies of many kinds, to be turned over to those nations which are now in actual war with aggressor nations. Our most useful and immediate role is to act as an arsenal for them as well as for ourselves…

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."