The Four Freedoms

 

Remember the Four Freedoms, the ones that FDR first espoused on July 5, 1940 & shared with the world in January 1941, that Norman Rockwell so beautifully captured?  It feels like Americans have either forgotten or have wildly different ideas of what is meant by WORSHIP   SPEECH   FEAR   WANT.

President Franklin Roosevelt - a man as divisive as President Obama, with millions loving & other millions loathing him - first shared those words with reporters gathered for an impromptu press conference at Hyde Park, the president's New York home.  He was talking about events unfolding in Europe when he first brought up his view of our basic freedoms.  Reading the first, can't help by think of today's net neutrality battles:


“You might say there are certain freedoms. The first I would call ‘freedom of information,’ which is terribly important. It is a much better phrase than ‘freedom of the press,’ because there are all kinds of information so that the inhabitants of a country can get news of what is going on in every part of the country and in every part of the world without censorship and through many forms of communication.” 

He went onto share three more universal freedoms  - the freedom of religion, the freedom to  “express one’s self as long as you don’t advocate the overthrow of government,” then added the novel “freedom from fear, so that people won’t be afraid of being bombed from the air or attacked, one way or the other, by some other nation.”  


The Political Setting
While it's of interest to know the physical setting of the 07/05/40 "off the record" press conference was a study in a mansion along the Hudson, it's crucial to understand the political setting.  

Hard to imagine that it was July of a presidential election year & the Republicans had only just picked their candidate, the Dems didn't have a clue who they'd pick in a couple weeks.  

The GOP was still getting to know their candidate, Wendell Wilkie, a "dark horse" choice who sounds very familiar in a lot of ways to the current presumed Republican candidate.  A large part of his appeal was Wilke's total lack of political experience,  A lifelong Democrat, the Wall Street-based industrialist switched parties in 1939.  He hadn't run in the primaries - which were very different from what we know today - but curried favor with party power brokers & opinion-molding newspapers.  Behind the scenes, in actual smoke-filled rooms, party bosses had the real say in who nabbed the nomination.  By the time Wilkie arrived in Philadelphia, his star was on the ascend while all the rest were falling or had crashed.  FDR was leery of the Republican nominee, fearing Wilkie didn't have "much knowledge of the world … he would have had to learn … in the school of hard experience.”   

At the time Roosevelt had his chat with reporters, the Democratic convention was still a couple weeks away.  Several Democrats - Postmaster James Farley, VP John Nance Garner & Senator Burton Wheeler - had thrown their hats in the ring, assuming FDR would honor the tradition of limiting himself to two terms.  Seek an unprecedented 3rd term?  He had not made any move toward openly seeking it. 

If FDR was shaken by the GOP's choice, he was also alarmed by his party's options.  Garner was a Texas conservative, Wheeler was an isolationist.  Farley would have been an outstanding successor BUT he was Catholic, which - in 1940 - would have made him virtually a non-starter to win the presidency.


Back to Hyde Park

All of that was on the reporters' minds as they listened to the president speak. They knew what he was referring to when he continued,  “The question really comes down to whether we are going to continue to seek those freedoms or whether we are going to give up.” 


A reporter for my own local newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, spoke up.  "Well, I had a fifth in mind, which you might describe as ‘freedom from want’—free trade, opening up trade.”

FDR responded, “Yes, that is true. I had that in mind but forgot it. Freedom from want—in other words, the removal of certain barriers between nations, cultural in the first place and commercial in the second place. That is the fifth, very definitely.” 

What grew out of this shared discussion would be the Four Freedoms the President shared in his 1941 State of the Union speech, in which he proclaimed America had a mandate to spread over a troubled world.  

 
Eleanor's Influence

The day before her husband shared his thoughts with the White House press corps, decamped to the Hudson, Eleaor Roosevelt shared HER understanding of the American Revolution's lasting legacy.  In her “My Day” newspaper column, datelined July 4, she wrote:



I personally want to continue to live in a country where I can think as I please, go to any church I please, or to none if that is my desire; say what I please, and within the limits of any free society, do what I please. 

I want the right to work, and I want that opportunity to be extended to all my fellow citizens. I want them to have an equal opportunity for educational development, for health and for recreation, which is all part of the building of a human being capable of coping with the modern world.


Which Brings Us to FDR's 1941 State of the Union

Unlike FDR & the reporters (all male) in his study, Eleanor saw the liberties our ancestors won as more, deeper than what her husband had shared. Her perception merged with his to become the freedoms he shared six months later with a frightened nation & world:  


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 world-wide 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 speech helped buttress America for what would come in less than a year.  The Four Freedoms - a collaboration between a president as divisive as our present occupant of the White House, a First Lady reviled by as many (perhaps more) than HRC - are still held dear, or at least we claim they are, by Americans from coast to coast, from the glaciers of Alaska to the lava beaches of Hawaii.  

Now, more than ever, we need to step & far away from those fears that surround & - with too many - fill  us.  Our ancestors beseech us to remember those freedoms & all that they mean if the American dream that is the foundation of any greatness isn't to become our national nightmare.

 

Oh, in case you're wondering how FDR came to run for his history-making 3rd term - a "reluctant to run" Roosevelt was drafted by his party AT the convention, nominated from the floor.