Four Freedoms

Nothing to do with the poor Russian people starting their own businesses.

The American business enterprise thus became a model for the world, and thus the Four Freedoms, right? The Four Freedoms that we read about earlier in this book.

Life magazine in 1944 made the connection between the societal organizing principles and economics, and they called it, quote, "capitalism." By any other name, it is the free market.

Um, blah, blah, blah.

But what does this really mean for the world? And this is, this is a quote from...

Let's see what this is from.

The second theme of American l- well, this is, this is the Four Freedoms, right? According to Time magazine, Billings and Luce.

In a strictly confidential m- memorandum to Billings, Henry Luce revealed the inner dynamic of American life and called it, uh, uh, he na- named this theme as liberty and freedom, defined as the ability to make all the money that one can in any damn well way you please.

FDR and his sort of view of, you know, this is kind of the, it came out of the New Deal, and this idea of security, and then expanding it.

But, um, that was a good segue because I was gonna get into the Four Freedoms.

All right.

And you get from, you know, Munich and '38, you're starting to see more of a turn here towards internationalism, and h- FDR starting to make these arguments, um, and then we're pushing to get rid of the Neutrality Acts, either through cash and carry and destroyers for bases, and then ultimately Lend-Lease.

But tie that together for me with the, the, when he introduces the Four Freedoms and how that is tied to, you know, this notion of the New Deal and what they've been doing, and where do you see that and how important is that Four Freedom speech?

Well, the Four Freedom speech is hugely important, and it becomes the slogan of, of, of the Second World War for the United States.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm

That didn't really work, and so the- the Fabians put out and created all of these modern institutions that we know about today, explicitly on record.

So League of Nations was a Fabian creation, and that was through the machinations of, uh, Colonel Edwin Mandell House working for the Rothschild and the British, uh, the Bank of England and so forth to get Woodrow Wilson into promoting, uh, the notion of the Four Freedoms, the, um, a, a new, uh, uh, uh, global system of governance and...

But the League of Nations ended up failing.

And so the, uh, Fabians r- came back with a new style of how to do this based on what they call steering committee models.

Yeah, correct.

I mean, I was just, uh, looking again at, at, um, some of the propaganda from, uh, FDR and, um, the idea of the Four Freedoms and all this, and how America would be the, uh, universal police force to guard the Four Freedoms, Team America type bullshit.

[laughs]

And, and, uh, yeah, I mean, and, and, and the irony is that even though at that time it didn't mean, um, you know, turning kids into the opposite gender and, uh, you know, transifying the world, guess what? That's what it means now.

Right.

I go back to the four freedoms that Franklin Roosevelt announced during World War II and which Norman Rockwell made the famous paintings of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Now, freedom of religion and freedom of speech are protected to some extent under the First Amendment, but freedom from want isn't its own freestanding right.

And freedom from fear is also not its own freestanding right.

But those are the rights we hold dear in a modern society, which is part of the reason that the Four Freedoms paintings mean so much to people historically.

And so I think that part of what happens is that we have certain constitutional provisions and statutory schemes that limit the ability to deprive people of these rights and that provide a mechanism for living out some of these benefits, and that you can protect what you think of as a right through protecting those statutory mechanisms or enforcing them in different ways.

So the laws that are established maybe can help establish and protect the expectations, maybe is a better word than rights, that you have of our modern society.

Freedom from want.

This is one of four paintings he made from 1942 to 43 to illustrate the, quote, four freedoms laid out by Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6, 1941, when he provided the moral framework for America's involvement in World War II.

The other three are freedom of speech, freedom of worship, and freedom from fear.

If you look closely at Freedom From Want, which is on permanent display at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, you see first how utterly brilliant Rockwell was.

That's not the city we want to have.

So we're here at Four Freedoms Park.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the most liberal president, progressive president in our history, elected four times.

A lot of people don't remember a time when a liberal lion like that could be leading this country.

I don't know.

But what I would say is that regardless of how he would describe himself, he would consider what we are fighting for to be in alignment with that same movement.

I mean, we think about the four freedoms, right? We're talking about freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of expression and speech, freedom of religion.

These are in many ways still the things that we are fighting for.