SPEECHES

The State of the Union Address to Congress ~ 6 January 1941

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

THE FOUR FREEDOMS

Only eight days after promising to make America the arsenal of democracy, Roosevelt addressed Congress and made perhaps the most famous speech of his career, in which he declared that America would support all nations that struggled on behalf of four essential freedoms: freedom of speech and religion and freedom from want and fear (an echo of his inaugural address).

Roosevelt was again offering implicit support to Britain and coaxing Americans towards a war that he was convinced they would sooner or later be forced to enter.

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 sixteen long months this assault has blocked out the whole pattern of democratic life in an appalling number of independent nations, great and small. 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.

Armed defence of democratic existence is now being gallantly waged in four continents. If that defence fails, all the populations and all the resources of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia will be dominated by the conquerors. Let us remember that the total of those populations and their resources in those four continents greatly exceeds the sum total of the populations and their resources of the whole of the Western Hemisphere many times over.

In times like these, it is immature - and incidentally, untrue - for anybody to brag that an unprepared America, single-handed, and with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off the whole world.

No realistic American can expect from a dictator’s peace international generosity, or return of true independence, or world disarmament, or freedom of expression, or freedom of religion, or even good business.

Such a peace would bring no security for us or for our neighbours. ‘Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.’

As a nation, we may take pride in the fact that we are soft-hearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed.

We must always be aware of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal preach the “ism“ of appeasement.

We must especially be wary of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests.

I have recently pointed out how quickly the tempo of modern warfare could bring into our very midst the physical attack which we must eventually expect if the dictator nations win this war.

There is much loose talk of our immunity from immediate and direct invasion from across the seas. Obviously, as long as the British Navy retains its power, no such danger exists. Even if there were no British Navy, it is not probable that any enemy would be stupid enough to attack us by landing troops in the United States from across thousands of miles of ocean, until it had acquired strategic bases from which to operate.

But we learn we much from the lessons of the past years in Europe - particularly the lesson of Norway, whose essential seaports were captured by treachery and surprise built up over a series of years.

As long as the aggressor nations maintain the offensive, they - not we - will choose the time and the place and the method of their attack.

That is why the future of all the American Republics is today in serious danger.

That is why this annual message to the Congress is unique in our history.

That is why every member of the Executive Branch of the Government and every member of the Congress faces great responsibility and great accountability.

The need of the moment is that our actions and our policy should be devoted primarily - almost exclusively - to meeting this foreign peril. For all our domestic problems are now a part of the great emergency.

Just as our National policy in internal affairs has been based upon a decent respect for the rights and the dignity of all our fellow men within our gates, so our national policy in foreign affairs has been based on a decent respect for the rights and dignity of all nations, large and small. And the justice of morality must and will win in the end.

Our national policy is this:

First, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to all-inclusive national defence.

Second, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to full support of all those resolute peoples, everywhere, who are resisting aggression and are thereby keeping war away from our Hemisphere. By this support, we express our determination that the democratic cause shall prevail; and we strengthen the defence and the security of our own nation.

Third, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are committed to the proposition that principles of morality and considerations for our own security will never permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers . We know that enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people’s freedom.

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 word-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 neighbour - 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.

Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change - in a perpetual peaceful revolution - a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions - without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

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 our unity of purpose.

To that high concept there can be no end save victory.

*The Capitol ~ a reminder of 6 January 1941, 6 January 2021, 8 December 1941 …and well, let’s pretend that the 2026 State of the Union Address never happened.*
*If the American people step back from the abyss, they might, just might, even at this fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour to midnight restore this world view of how America was* ***once*** *perceived.*
*Kenneth Thomas Webb 2026*
*This striking image is by Harold Mendoza @haroldrmen doza via Unsplash through Squarespace and to whom ll rights are reserved.*