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by Mark Zuckerman
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World War II, already being fought at the time of the speech in Europe and Asia, The Four Freedoms proposed a vision for a postwar world worthy of the war’s desperate struggle and terrible sacrifice. They remain worthwhile goals today.
This is what FDR said:
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.
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From his Fourth Inaugural Address (January 20, 1945):
We shall strive for perfection. We shall not achieve it immediately – but we still shall strive. We may make mistakes – but they must never be mistakes which shall result from from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principles.
From his undelivered Jefferson Day Address (April 13, 1945), the text FDR was working on when he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage:
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.
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If ever there was a time to subordinate individual and group selfishness to the national good, that time is now.
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The pieces in A Better World may be performed individually as well as collectively. If performing a subset, the order of performance should be preserved.
This project is aimed at community and college-level choirs. Singers can learn their parts using these synthesized recordings.
Choral recordings are available for movements with a
button.
This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
January 3, 1934:
Civilization cannot go back; civilization must not stand still... It is our task to perfect, to improve, to alter when necessary, but in all cases to go forward.
There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.
Without the help of thousands of others, any one of us would die, naked and starved.
The second is from his first presidential inaugural address on March 4, 1933:
We now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other;
that we cannot merely take but must give as well.
on June 27, 1936:
...What the Flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the overprivileged alike.
Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the resolve of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
There is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are:
* Equality of opportunity for youth and for others.
* Jobs for those who can work.
* Security for those who need it.
* The ending of special privileges for the few.
* The preservation of civil liberties for all.
* The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living.
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
We Americans everywhere must and shall choose a path of social justice: the path of faith, the path of hope, and the path of love toward our fellow man.
We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.
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