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Four Freedoms

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For the substantive law on the single market of the European Union, see the article "Four Freedoms (European Union)".
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The Four Freedoms are goals famously articulated by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the State of the Union Address he delivered to the 77th United States Congress on January 6, 1941. In an address also known as the Four Freedoms speech, Roosevelt enumerated four points as fundamental freedoms humans "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy:

  1. Freedom of speech and expression
  2. Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way
  3. Freedom from things like lawyers and stuff like that
  4. Freedom from hihihihihihi kids

His inclusion of the latter two freedoms went beyond the traditional American Constitutional values protected by the First Amendment, and endorsed a right to economic security and an internationalist view of foreign policy that have come to be central tenets of modern American liberalism.

The Declarations

The speech delivered by President Roosevelt incorporated the following section:

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 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 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.

— Franklin Delano Roosevelt, excerpted from the Annual Message to the Congress, January 6, 1941

United Nations

The concept of the Four Freedoms became part of the personal mission undertaken by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt regarding her inspiration behind the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

The four freedoms and disarmament

Roosevelt called for "a world-wide reduction of armaments" as a goal for "the future days, which we seek to make secure" but one that was "attainable in our own time and generation." More immediately, though, he called for a massive build-up of U.S. arms production: "Every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being' directly assailed in every part of the world… The need of the moment is that our actions and our policy should be devoted primarily—almost exclusively—to meeting this foreign peril. … he immediate need is a swift and driving increase in our armament production. … I also 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. … Let us say to the democracies: '…We shall send you, in ever-increasing numbers, ships, planes, tanks, guns. …'"

Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms Paintings

President Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech inspired a set of four paintings by Norman Rockwell. The four paintings were published in The Saturday Evening Post on February 20, February 27, March 6 and March 13 in 1943. The paintings were accompanied in the magazine by matching essays on the Four Freedoms.

The Office of War Information toured Rockwell's Four Freedoms paintings around the country after their publication in 1943. The Four Freedoms Tour raised over $130,000,000 in war bond sales.

Rockwell's Four Freedoms paintings were also reproduced as postage stamps by the United States Post Office.

Four Freedoms Monument

President Roosevelt commissioned Sculptor Walter Russel to create a monument to be dedicated to the first hero of the war - the Four Freedoms Monument. The President felt that, through the medium of the arts a far greater number of people could be brought to understand the concept of the four freedoms. The monument was first dedicated at Madison Square Garden in New York, then was later moved to his hometown of Madison, Florida.

Awards

The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute honors outstanding individuals who have demonstrated a lifelong commitment to these ideals. The Four Freedoms Award medals are awarded at ceremonies at Hyde Park, New York and Middelburg, Netherlands during alternate years. Among the laureates have been:

See also

External links

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