Obama’s Second Term Could Mark the Return Of The Four Freedoms

[babylonsister]

http://www.nationalmemo.com/obamas-second-term-could-mark-the-return-of-the-four-freedoms/

Obama’s 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 FDR’s 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. That’s why freedom is not an abstract idea; freedom is the very thing that makes human progress possible—not 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 America’s 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 Burma—the first by an American president—was 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 president’s 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 War—the 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.”

[peacebird]

1. Wow! Color me hopeful, if this is the path he is choosing for his second term!

[dotymed]

2. Most Progressives (like me)

hope that President Obama will base his foreign relations and especially his domestic agenda on those principles championed by FDR. A second bill of rights would be a tremendous step in the correct direction.

p.s. of course I am not including Japanese internment or any of the bad decisions...

[LukeFL]

16. How can he achieve this?

It would be my dream as well- but we don't have the house. Or can he acomplish it without the house?

[dotymed]

20. Even if we had the house...

our corporate masters would prevent it. We have to get control of the corporations who run (ruin) the world, especially America.
They will stop at nothing when profits are at stake.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

3. How To Shorten the Democratic Platform

Print a copy of Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech and say, "There. That's what we stand for."

'Nuff said.

[JoeyT]

4. K&R n/t

[krispos42]

5. hence my sigline! n/t

[tk2kewl]

8. K&R

[John2]

6. I

agree with his policies so far in Foreign and Domestic Affairs. We just need to use our power the right way. I also agree with the Policy on Iran. We need to use Diplomacy and military might as the last resort. They took the right step in the Hamas\Israeli conflict. The next step should be forcing Hamas,Israel and the Palestinian Authority back to the table. The U.S has leverage with all the participants. We have leverage in Iraq,Afghanistan,Libya, Egypt and leverage believe it or not on Iran. We just need to use it right. We also have some leverage with Pakistan if you look at the entire picture.

[valerief]

7. But Obama took away our freedumbs!

[pampango]

9. FDR "became more and more convinced that America’s security was tied to the security of the rest of

the world. As such, it was not enough for the United States to rely solely on the strength of its armed forces to provide for the nation’s safety; we also had to concern ourselves with the political, social, and economic health of other regions of the world since, as FDR put it in 1944, “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence”…and “people who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.”'

It was this basic idea that inspired not only the Four Freedoms, but also the many institutions and practices that were put in place during and after the war to foster international cooperation and a more prosperous, healthy, and peaceful world. Many of these institutions and practices—like the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and multilateral trading regime—are with us still, so that much of the world we live in today is the world shaped by the vision of Franklin Roosevelt.

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.”'

[craigmatic]

10. I'm cynical about this because if you read between the lines here he means 4 freedoms abroad

will make the US safe. It's also pretty telling that he didn't/wouldn't/couldn't make this speech at an American university.

[pampango]

12. That was FDR's conviction, too. 4 freedoms abroad would increase US security.

Franklin Roosevelt proposed “a greater conception,” a “moral order” that represented the very antithesis of the “tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.” FDR’s order was based on the idea that all people—“everywhere in the world”—deserved the right to enjoy freedom of speech and expression; freedom of worship; freedom from want; and freedom from fear.

FDR had "a much deeper conviction: that the security of the United States was tied directly to the health and well-being of other nations."

I agree that it is telling that he didn't make this speech in the US (assuming that he has not - which I am not sure of). If he has avoided this subject in his speeches in the US, I'm not sure whether that says more about him or about the attitude of some Americans whom he thinks might not be receptive to the message that we should care about freedoms in other countries, not only for the sake of people in those countries but for our own security and freedoms, too.

[craigmatic]

14. you missed my point. I was saying it was telling that he wouldn't make a speech here about

us Americans having those 4 freedoms here and being free from want because the media and republicans would call him socialist.

[pampango]

15. republicans don't want Americans to have the 4 freedoms, but they also don't acknowledge the linkage

(which FDR understood and promoted) between the existence of those freedoms in other countries and in the US.

[BlueJazz]

11. Crotch News is not going to like the "Freedom from fear" thing.

They mainly exist to keep their watchers in a total state of anxiety.

[jody]

13. Only about 42% of eligible voters bothered to vote. If the majority don't vote, they certainly won't

fight to reclaim those four freedoms.

In W.W.II, Norman Rockwell painted pictures depicting the "Freedom Of Speech", "Freedom of Worship", "Freedom from Want", and "Freedom from Fear". They became famous as posters for the war effort, perhaps the greatest moment in the history of these United States. Unfortunately, those cherished freedoms are in danger from people who would change the very foundation of our constitutional form of democracy.

[ProudProgressiveNow]

17. K&R nt

[Eyes of the World]

18. Good Leadership Decision

I want to hear more FDR references.

I think it builds the party as well the country.

[donheld]

19. now if the drone strikes would STOP i'd be very happy.

[dotymed]

21. I am for mandatory voting for all.

Of course, people must have factual information and there lies (pun intended) the problem.