Four Freedoms
For the substantive law on the single market of the European Union, see the article "Four Freedoms (European Union)".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:
#
Freedom of speech and expression#
Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way#Freedom from want - individual economic security#Freedom from fear - world disarmament to the point that wars of aggression are impossible.
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 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.
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.
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.
The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute [
1] 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:
*
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*
Václav Havel*
Mikhail Gorbachev*The
Dalai Lama*H.M.
Juan Carlos of
Spain*
Shimon Peres*
William Jefferson Clinton*
Liberalism in the United States*
Four Freedoms (European Union)*
Full text and audio of the Four Freedoms speech. An excerpt of the Four Freedoms section is also available.
*
Full text of the Four Freedoms speech.*
Four Freedoms Democratic Club*
Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms Paintings
