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The Four Freedoms are a set of freedoms United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously outlined in his State of the Union Address delivered to the 77th Congress on January 6, 1941 (the address is also known as the Four Freedoms speech). He outlined the following four freedoms, which he stated were fundamental freedoms all humans "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy:
- Freedom of speech and expression - worldwide
- Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way - worldwide
- Freedom from want - individual economic security - worldwide.
- Freedom from fear - world disarmament to the point that wars of agression are impossible.
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.
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.
Postage Stamps
President Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech inspired a set of four paintings by Norman Rockwell which were reproduced as postage stamps by the United States Post Office.
Awards
The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute [1] (http://www.feri.org/) honors outstanding individuals who have demonstrated a lifelong commitment to these ideals. Among the laureates have been Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, James Earle Carter, Averell Harriman, Coretta Scott King, Elie Wiesel, Thomas P. O'Neill, William Brennan, Mike Mansfield, H.R.H. Princess Juliana of the Netherlands, Vaclav Havel, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Dalai Lama, H.M. Juan Carlos of Spain, and Shimon Peres. Medals are awarded at ceremonies at Hyde Park, New York and Middelburg, the Netherlands during alternate years.
Media
During the 1980s various activities which promoted the Four Freedoms were conducted in the name of Four Freedoms Federation as part of the initial attempts to revive Wonderful Radio London as an offshore station. Later these activities expanded to promoting freedom from political bias which denied the premise of the "Four Freedoms" within school text books, to assisting free radio stations outside of the USA to stay on the air in response to governmental control of broadcasing content. In Dallas, Texas, KZEW FM became the "flagship station" of 4FWS during the Rock & Roll Alternative weekly program hosted by George Gimarc which was also carried on shortwave by KIWI Radio [2] (http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/9885/) based in New Zealand. 4FWS programs were also heard on stations such as PCRL in Birmingham, England.
Parody of the Four Freedoms
In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell created four mirror ministries of the Four Freedoms. George Orwell appears to have taken this 1941 speech and used it, along with his own experiences at the BBC, to create by reversal, the four key ministries of government in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Each is focused on an object in exquisite irony, utterly antithetical to its name so that the Ministry of Truth is concerned with lies, an idea that Orwell seems to have gained by his work at the BBC. The Ministry of Truth as a Ministry of Lies would also be a parody of the first of the four freedoms: "freedom of speech".
"The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war", wrote Orwell. A few years earlier, Roosevelt had described the fourth of his freedoms as being "freedom from fear". Reality said otherwise and so did Orwell in describing the "Ministry of Peace."
"... the Ministry of Love", wrote Orwell, was in reality concerned "with torture". The second of the four freedoms addressed the issue of religion. If "God is love" then the "Ministry of Love" could be interpreted as mocking that ideal as well.
Finally Orwell described the "Ministry of Plenty" as dealing in reality "with starvation". The third of Roosevelt's four freedoms addressed the issue of freedom from want. Orwell seems to have heard these words with a sarcastic mindset.
Orwellian Inaugural reference
During the delivery of his Second Inaugural Address (http://www.usa-presidents.info/inaugural/bush-2.html) on January 20, 2005, President George W. Bush recited the following paragrah:
"By making every citizen an agent of his or her own destiny, we will give our fellow Americans greater freedom from want and fear and make our society more prosperous and just and equal."
The reference to ... freedom from want and fear ... recalls the wording of the third and fourth of the original Four Freedoms outlined by President Roosevelt in 1941 during World War II, but before the United States had become a party to that international military conflict.
The fourth freedom was translated by President Roosevelt to mean a worldwide reduction in arms so that no nation would be in a position to commit an act of physical agresssion against any neighbor, anywhere in the world. In 2005 while President Bush was recalling the fourth freedom, the United States of America was engaged in a military conflict in Iraq which it had begun. It was George Orwell in his novel Nineteen Eighty Four who reverted the fourth freedom to mean the exact opposite of its original intended meaning.
See also
External links
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