jan 1, 1941 - "Four Freedoms" Speech

Description:

Basic human rights identified by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to justify support for Britain in World War II: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.


With the election settled, Roosevelt sought to persuade Congress to increase aid to Britain, whose survival he viewed as key to American security. In January 1941, Roosevelt delivered the State of the Union address, in what became one of his defining moments. In laying out “four essential human freedoms” — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear — Roosevelt cast the war as a defense of democratic societies. He then linked the fate of democracy in Western Europe with the new welfare state at home. Sounding a decidedly New Deal note, Roosevelt pledged to end “special privileges for the few” and to preserve “civil liberties for all.” Like President Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” speech championing national self-determination at the close of World War I, Roosevelt’s “ Four Freedoms” speech outlined a liberal international order with appeal well beyond its intended European and American audiences. Since, at the time, nearly one-third of the world’s peoples lived in colonies under a foreign power, FDR’s words seemed to promise, as Wilson’s had, liberation from external domination.

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