TheFour Freedoms were goals articulated byU.S. PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt on Monday, January 6, 1941. In an address known as theFour Freedoms speech (technically the1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy:
Roosevelt delivered his speech 11 months before the surprise Japanese attack onPearl Harbor, which caused the United States to declare war on Japan on December 8, 1941. TheState of the Union speech before Congress was largely about thenational security of the United States and the threat to other democracies fromworld war. In the speech, he made a break with the long-held tradition ofUnited States non-interventionism. He outlined the U.S. role in helping allies already engaged in warfare, especially Great Britain and China.
In that context, he summarized the values of democracy behind the bipartisan consensus on international involvement that existed at the time. A famous quote from the speech prefaces those values: "As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone." In the second half of the speech, he lists the benefits of democracy, which include economic opportunity, employment, social security, and the promise of "adequate health care". The first two freedoms, of speech andreligion, are protected by theFirst Amendment in theUnited States Constitution. His inclusion of the latter two freedoms went beyond the traditional Constitutional values protected by theU.S. Bill of Rights. Roosevelt endorsed a broader humanright toeconomic security and anticipated what would become known decades later as the "human security"paradigm in studies ofeconomic development. He also included the "freedom from fear" against international aggression, calling for a "world-wide reduction of armaments."[1]
In the 1930s many Americans, arguing that the involvement inWorld War I had been a mistake, were adamantly against continued intervention in European affairs.[2] With theNeutrality Acts established after 1935, U.S. law banned the sale of armaments to countries that were at war and placed restrictions on travel with belligerent vessels.[3]
WhenWorld War II began in September 1939, the neutrality laws were still in effect and ensured that no substantial support could be given to Britain and France. With the revision of the Neutrality Act in 1939, Roosevelt adopted a "methods-short-of-war policy" whereby supplies and armaments could be given to European Allies, provided no declaration of war could be made and no troops committed.[4] By December 1940, Europe was largely at the mercy ofAdolf Hitler and Germany'sNazi regime. With Germany's defeat of France in June 1940, Britain and its overseas Empire stood alone against the military alliance of Germany, Italy, and Japan. Winston Churchill, as Prime Minister of Britain, called for Roosevelt and the United States to supply them with armaments in order to continue with the war effort.[citation needed]
The1939 New York World's Fair had celebrated Four Freedoms – religion, speech, press, and assembly – and commissionedLeo Friedlander to create sculptures representing them.Mayor of New York CityFiorello La Guardia described the resulting statues as the "heart of the fair". Later Roosevelt would declare his own "Four Essential Freedoms" and call onWalter Russell to create aFour Freedoms Monument that was eventually dedicated atMadison Square Garden in New York City.[5]
They also appeared on the reverse of theAM-lira, the Allied Military Currency note issue that was issued in Italy during WWII, by the Americans, that was in effect occupation currency, guaranteed by the American dollar.
The Four Freedoms Speech was given on January 6, 1941. Roosevelt's hope was to provide a rationale for why the United States should abandon the isolationist policies that emerged from World War I. In the address, Roosevelt critiqued Isolationism, saying: "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 neighbors. 'Those, who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.'"[6]
The speech coincided with the introduction of the Lend-Lease Act, which promoted Roosevelt's plan to become the "arsenal of democracy"[7] and support the Allies (mainly the British) with much-needed supplies.[8] Furthermore, the speech established what would become the ideological basis for America's involvement in World War II, all framed in terms of individual rights and liberties that are the hallmark of American politics.[2]
The speech delivered by President Roosevelt incorporated the following text, known as the "Four Freedoms":[6]
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 D. Roosevelt, excerpted from the State of the Union Address to the Congress, January 6, 1941[9]
Later in the same speech the president went on to specify six basic goals:[10]
The declaration of the Four Freedoms as a justification for war would resonate through the remainder of the war, and for decades longer as a frame of remembrance.[2] The Freedoms became the staple of America's war aims and the center of all attempts to rally public support for the war. With the creation of the Office of War Information (1942), as well as thefamous paintings byNorman Rockwell, the Freedoms were advertised as values central to American life and examples of American exceptionalism.[11]
The Four Freedoms Speech was popular, and the goals were influential in postwar politics. However, in 1941 the speech received heavy criticism from anti-war elements.[12] Critics argued that the Four Freedoms were simply a charter for Roosevelt'sNew Deal, social reforms that had already created sharp divisions within Congress. Conservatives who opposed social programs and increased government intervention argued against Roosevelt's attempt to justify and depict the war as necessary for the defense of lofty goals.[13]
While the Freedoms did become a forceful aspect of American thought on the war, they were never the exclusive justification for the war. Polls and surveys conducted by theUnited States Office of War Information (OWI) revealed that self-defense and vengeance for theattack on Pearl Harbor were still the most prevalent reasons for war.[14]
The concept of the Four Freedoms became part of the personal mission undertaken byformer First LadyEleanor Roosevelt in 1948. She helped inspire theUnited Nations Declaration of Human Rights, General Assembly Resolution 217A. Indeed, these Four Freedoms were explicitly incorporated into the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads: "Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy the freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed the highest aspiration of the common people."[15]
FDR 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. ... [T]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.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt[16]
In a 1942 radio address, President Roosevelt declared the Four Freedoms embodied "rights of men of every creed and every race, wherever they live."[17] On February 19, 1942, he authorizedJapanese American internment withExecutive Order 9066. It allowed local military commanders to designate "military areas" as "exclusion zones", from which "any or all persons may be excluded". This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and much of Oregon, Washington, and Arizona, except for those in internment camps.[18] By 1946, the United States had incarcerated 120,000 individuals of Japanese descent, of whom about 80,000 had been born in the United States.[19]
TheFranklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park is a park designed by the architectLouis Kahn for the south point ofRoosevelt Island.[20] The park celebrates the famous speech, and text from the speech is inscribed on a granite wall in the final design of the park.
TheRoosevelt Institute[21] honors outstanding individuals who have demonstrated a lifelong commitment to these ideals. TheFour Freedoms Award medals are awarded at ceremonies atHyde Park, New York andMiddelburg,Netherlands during alternate years. The awards were first presented in 1982 on the centenary of President Roosevelt's birth as well as the bicentenary of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Netherlands.
Among the laureates have been:
Roosevelt's speech inspired a set of four paintings byNorman Rockwell.
The members of the set, known collectively asThe Four Freedoms, were published in four consecutive issues ofThe Saturday Evening Post.[32] The four paintings subsequently were displayed around the US by theUnited States Department of the Treasury.
Each painting was published with a matchingessay on that particular "Freedom":[33]
Rockwell'sFour Freedoms paintings were reproduced aspostage stamps by theUnited States Post Office in 1943,[38] in 1946,[39] and in 1994,[40] the centenary of Rockwell's birth.
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