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2016 Postmortem
Showing Original Post only (View all)Obama’s Second Term Could Mark the Return Of The Four Freedoms [View all]
http://www.nationalmemo.com/obamas-second-term-could-mark-the-return-of-the-four-freedoms/Obamas Second Term Could Mark the Return Of The Four Freedoms
November 22nd, 2012 10:45 am David Woolner
As part of our series A Rooseveltian Second-Term Agenda, a call to return to a foreign policy based on FDRs vision of shared peace and prosperity.
Even though we come from different places, we share common dreams: to choose our leaders; to live together in peace; to get an education and make a good living; to love our families and our communities. Thats why freedom is not an abstract idea; freedom is the very thing that makes human progress possiblenot just at the ballot box, but in our daily lives.
One of our greatest presidents in the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, understood this truth. He defined Americas cause as more than the right to cast a ballot. He understood democracy was not just voting. He called upon the world to embrace four fundamental freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These four freedoms reinforce one another, and you cannot fully realize one without realizing them all.Barack H. Obama, University of Yangon, November 19, 2012
One of our greatest presidents in the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, understood this truth. He defined Americas cause as more than the right to cast a ballot. He understood democracy was not just voting. He called upon the world to embrace four fundamental freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These four freedoms reinforce one another, and you cannot fully realize one without realizing them all.Barack H. Obama, University of Yangon, November 19, 2012
In his historic visit to Burma, also referred to as Myanmar, President Obama spoke at length about the journey Burma is taking from dictatorship to democracy, a transition he said has the potential to inspire people the world over as a test of whether a country can transition to a better place.
President Obama made it clear that his journey to Burmathe first by an American presidentwas inspired in part by his own desire to encourage the people and government of Burma to press ahead with their democratic reforms so that the flickers of progress that the world has seen will not be extinguished. The presidents visit was also notable for his repeated insistence that America was a Pacific nation, whose future was bound to those nations and peoples to our West. But perhaps the most significant aspect of his speech was his decision to frame his remarks around a concept first articulated by Franklin D. Roosevelt at one of the darkest moments of the Second World Warthe need to build a world founded on four fundamental human freedoms.
snip//
His eloquent speech in Burma may indicate that he has decided to pursue a more progressive foreign policy agenda in his second term, one based on the recognition that the best means to keep America safe in the long term is to ensure that the hopes and aspirations of people the world over to enjoy freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear stand not, as Roosevelt said, as some vision of a distant millennium, but as a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.
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Wow! Color me hopeful, if this is the path he is choosing for his second term!
peacebird
Nov 2012
#1
FDR "became more and more convinced that America’s security was tied to the security of the rest of
pampango
Nov 2012
#9
I'm cynical about this because if you read between the lines here he means 4 freedoms abroad
craigmatic
Nov 2012
#10
you missed my point. I was saying it was telling that he wouldn't make a speech here about
craigmatic
Nov 2012
#14
republicans don't want Americans to have the 4 freedoms, but they also don't acknowledge the linkage
pampango
Nov 2012
#15