WILL THAULT: Freedom Month: Celebration of the four freedoms

By Will Thault

On Jan. 6, 81 years ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his annual Message to Congress (now known as the State of the Union Address) after being newly elected to serve an unprecedented third term as President of the United States.

The stakes were high. Europe and Asia were ablaze in a brutal world war against Nazi and Imperialist aggression that was not as yet our fight. Much of Europe had fallen under a German blitzkrieg with Great Britain barely hanging on.

While a great number of Americans were still committed to isolationism, it was clear that Britain had become the last obstacle between Hitler and his dream of world domination. If the Germans weren’t stopped at England’s shores, ours most certainly would be next. The president knew this and saw that the task before him was to convince the American people that aid and support of England were essential to the price of freedom. No one could know that in just 11 months, we too would be drawn into vicious wars that truly encompassed the earth.

During his speech before Congress, FDR made his case for American involvement, calling for continued aid to “those nations which are now in actual war with aggressor nations” and the ramping up of war industries at home. “Our most useful and immediate role is to act as an arsenal for them as well as for ourselves. They do not need manpower. They do need billions of dollars worth of the weapons of defense … who by their determined and heroic resistance are giving us time in which to make ready our own defense. … Let us say to the democracies: ‘We Americans are vitally concerned in your defense of freedom. We are putting forth our energies, our resources and our organizing powers to give you the strength to regain and maintain a free world. We shall send you, in ever-increasing numbers, ships, planes, tanks, guns. This is our purpose and our pledge.’”

FDR’s next words could well be spoken today as we hear similar threats to the free world by Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine. “In fulfillment of this purpose we will not be intimidated by the threats of dictators that they will regard as a breach of international law and as an act of war our aid to the democracies which dare to resist their oppression. Such aid is not an act of war, even if a dictator should unilaterally proclaim it so to be.

“When the dictators are ready to make war upon us, they will not wait for an act of war on our part. … Their only interest is in a new one-way international law, which lacks mutuality in its observance, and, therefore becomes an instrument of oppression.”

By helping in Britain’s war effort, Roosevelt said that the U.S. was fighting for the universal freedoms that all people possessed. “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 peace time 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.”

Roosevelt said the time to realize such freedoms was at hand.

“That is no vision of a distant millennium,” he said. “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.

“Since the beginning of our American history we have been engaged in change — in a perpetual peaceful revolution — a revolution which goes to steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions.”

“This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is in our unity of purpose.”

Some might say in this divided nation that the Four Freedoms spoken of long ago are a bit naïve, but they found their way into the Atlantic Charter later that year, the United Nations Declaration on Jan. 1, 1942, and later in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948. While FDR’s hopes may still be only dreams, they’re nonetheless worthy goals.

As we kick off next week by celebrating the Fourth, join me in calling on all Americans to proclaim the whole month of July Freedom Month in honor of those high aspirations that, only in our boldness, can this nation hope to reach someday.

I’ll dig deeper in my columns during the following July Sundays describing each of the Four Freedoms and why they mean so much, not only in the healing of America, but to the whole world as well.