Past Daily

FDR‘s Four Freedoms State of The Union – as relevant today as ever.

Click on the link here for Audio Player: FDR – State Of The Union – 1941

With a message as relevant today as it was in 1941, President Roosevelt delivered his State Of The Union during a time when the U.S. was teetering dangerously close to getting officially involved in the War which was spreading throughout the rest of the world.

FDR: “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”.

In case you haven’t heard this address lately, or never have, here is that complete State of The Union, delivered by President Roosevelt on January 6, 1941.

A reminder of who we are and where we’ve come from and how far we’ve drifted.

~ by gordonskene on January 10, 2013.

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