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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsA Liberal’s Call to Real Liberty - How FDR redefined freedom and changed America.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the concept of the Four Freedoms several weeks after he won an unprecedented third term as president. In a speech on January 6, 1941, he declared,
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 . The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way . The third is freedom from want . The fourth is freedom from fear . 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.
By balancing the civil liberties contained in the nations founding documents with a new vision of economic security, Roosevelt invited another reconstruction of our democracyone no less radical than the upheaval that took place after the Civil War. He declared that the right to life described in the Declaration of Independence means that everyone has also a right to make a comfortable living . Our Government owes to everyone an avenue to possess himself of a portion of [Americas] plenty sufficient for his needs, through his own work. Roosevelt challenged the notion that economic laws were products of nature, and instead argued that the rights of each individual trump the rights of business. While signing a minimum-wage bill Roosevelt, in a statement that bears repeating today, stated that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages has any right to continue in this country.
If these ideas sound radical, it is because they were. They were also wildly popular: a May 1942 survey found that the Four Freedoms had a powerful and genuine appeal to seven persons in ten. Throughout his book, Kaye does a masterful job of showing how the American ideal, captured succinctly in the Four Freedoms, was one of the animating forces of the generation.
the rest:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/junejulyaugust_2014/on_political_books/a_liberals_call_to_real_libert050666.php
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A Liberal’s Call to Real Liberty - How FDR redefined freedom and changed America. (Original Post)
kpete
Jun 2014
OP
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)1. We need more FDRs!
Thanks!
whathehell
(28,969 posts)2. +10000 n/t
MisterP
(23,730 posts)3. while getting nothing but Clevelands we're TOLD noisily are really just FDRs, but that we're just
not grateful enough and that's why we simply can't see how FDR they are