{"id":17905,"date":"2023-01-06T09:48:51","date_gmt":"2023-01-06T14:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=17905"},"modified":"2023-01-06T09:53:12","modified_gmt":"2023-01-06T14:53:12","slug":"fdrs-corrupt-concept-of-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/06\/fdrs-corrupt-concept-of-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"FDR’s Corrupt Concept of Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>RealClearHistory, January 6, 2023<\/h3>\n

FDR’s Corrupt Concept of Freedom<\/a><\/h1>\n
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The “Four Freedoms” Speech: FDR\u2019s Worst Perversion of Freedom<\/h1>\n
The \u201cfour freedoms\u201d offered citizens no security from the state since it completely ignored the rights guaranteed in the original Bill of Rights that restricted government power.<\/div>\n
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\"James <\/a><\/div>\n
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by\u00a0 James Bovard<\/a><\/h6>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Franklin Roosevelt did more than any other modern president to corrupt Americans\u2019 understanding of freedom. This month marked the 75th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary of his 1944 speech calling for a second Bill of Rights to guarantee economic freedom to Americans.\u00a0The Nation<\/em> magazine whooped up<\/a>\u00a0the anniversary, proclaiming that Democrats now have a \u201cunique\u2014and likely fleeting\u2014opportunity to deliver where FDR fell short\u201d with vast new government programs.<\/p>\n

Making up “Freedoms” While Suppressing Others<\/h2>\n

The 1944 speech, given as the tide in World War II was finally turning, was a followup to his\u00a01941 \u201cFour Freedoms\u201d speech<\/a>, which exploited Americans\u2019 rising apprehensions toward far more power for the government. Roosevelt promised citizens freedom of speech and freedom of worship and then, as if he was merely enumerating other self-evident rights, declared: \u201cThe third [freedom] is freedom from want . . . everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear . . . anywhere in the world.\u201d Proclaiming a goal of freedom from fear meant that government should fill the role in daily life previously filled by God and religion. Politicians are the biggest fearmongers, and \u201cfreedom from fear\u201d would justify seizing new power in response to every bogus federal alarm.<\/p>\n

FDR\u2019s list was clearly intended as a \u201creplacement set\u201d of freedoms since otherwise, there would have been no reason to mention freedom of speech and worship, which are already guaranteed by the First Amendment. The \u201cfour freedoms\u201d offered citizens no security from the state since it completely ignored the rights guaranteed in the original Bill of Rights that restricted government power, including the Second Amendment (to keep and bear firearms), the Fourth Amendment (freedom from unreasonable search and seizure), the Fifth Amendment (due process, property rights, the right against self-incrimination), the Sixth Amendment (the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury), and the Eighth Amendment (protection against excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments).<\/p>\n

And while Roosevelt pretended to magnanimously recognize a right to freedom of speech, that did not include freedom to dissent:<\/p>\n

A free nation has the right to expect full cooperation from all groups… The best way of dealing with the few slackers or trouble makers in our midst is, first, to shame them by patriotic example, and, if that fails, to use the sovereignty of government to save government.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Roosevelt sounded like James Madison had simply forgotten the asterisk to the First Amendment about using \u201cthe sovereignty of government to save government.\u201d FDR\u2019s \u201cnew freedom\u201d would justify suppressing anyone who balked at the political ruling class\u2019s latest goals.<\/p>\n

Regardless of its authoritarian overtones, FDR\u2019s Four Freedoms doctrine quickly became enshrined, by Norman Rockwell and others, in American political mythology. President George H.W. Bush, speaking on the 50th anniversary of the Four Freedoms speech, called FDR \u201cour greatest American political pragmatist\u201d and praised him for having \u201cbrilliantly enunciated the 20th-century vision of our Founding Fathers\u2019 commitment to individual liberty.\u201d President Bill Clinton declared in October 1996,<\/p>\n

In Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s view, government should be the perfect public system for fostering and protecting the “Four Freedoms” . . . Roosevelt . . . enumerated these freedoms not as abstract ideals but as goals toward which Americans\u2014and caring people everywhere\u2014could direct their most strenuous public efforts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

President George W. Bush invoked Roosevelt\u2019s Four Freedom proclamation in Bush\u2019s most fraudulent speech\u2014his \u201cMission Accomplished\u201d huff-and-strut aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003.<\/p>\n

The “Second Bill of Rights”<\/h2>\n

Three years later, in his\u00a01944 State of the Union address, Roosevelt revealed that the original Bill of Rights had \u201cproved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.\u201d Roosevelt called for a \u201cSecond Bill of Rights\u201d and asserted that \u201cTrue individual freedom can\u2019t exist without economic security.\u201d And security, according to FDR, included \u201cthe right to a useful and remunerative job,\u201d a \u201cdecent home,\u201d \u201cgood health,\u201d and \u201cgood education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thus, if a government school failed to teach all fifth graders to read, the nonreaders would be considered oppressed (lawsuits over public school failures in Michigan and elsewhere against local and state governments have relied on similar claptrap). Similarly, if someone was in bad health, then that person would be considered as having been deprived of his freedom, and somehow it would be the government\u2019s fault. Freedom thus required boundless control over health care.<\/p>\n

Roosevelt also declared that liberty requires \u201cthe right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.\u201d In other words, government should inflate food prices high enough to keep the nation\u2019s least efficient farmer behind his mule and plow. But FDR-style freedom also required unlimited federal control over every farmer. At that point, the USDA was dictating to every wheat farmer exactly how many acres of the grain they could grow. An Indiana farmer exceeded his quota to grow wheat to feed to his hogs. The Roosevelt administration hounded him all the way to the Supreme Court, claiming it needed a free hand to “suppress … a public evil.” And what was the “public evil”? Wheat surpluses and uppity farmers who failed to kowtow to every USDA bureaucrat.<\/p>\n

FDR also proclaimed \u201cthe right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition.\u201d Here was another new freedom that could be secured only by giving bureaucrats unlimited control of the private sector. Two years earlier, Congress enacted the Emergency Price Control Act, which created an Office of Price Administration with sweeping power to set or strike down prices in practically any industry.<\/p>\n

The act contained no substantive guidelines for the administrator\u2019s decisions but merely required prices that \u201cin his judgment will be generally fair and equitable.\u201d When the Supreme Court upheld the law in 1944, Justice Owen Roberts bitterly dissented that \u201cit is plain that this Act creates personal government by a petty tyrant instead of government by law.\u201d Roberts scoffed at the court\u2019s rubber-stamping of the law as a \u201csolemn farce\u201d because the law was written so that \u201cthe courts are unable to say that the Administrator has exceeded the discretion vested in him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pundits and progressives who are whooping up Roosevelt\u2019s Second Bill of Rights almost always ignore perhaps the biggest surprise in that speech.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pundits and progressives who are whooping up Roosevelt\u2019s Second Bill of Rights almost always ignore perhaps the biggest surprise in that speech. While Roosevelt spoke gaudily of new rights, he scooped George Orwell\u2019s\u00a01984<\/em>\u00a0by revealing that slavery was freedom\u2014or at least \u201cclose enough for government work.\u201d FDR urged Congress to enact a \u201cnational service law\u2014 which for the duration of the war . . . will make available for war production or for any other essential services every able-bodied adult in this Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

FDR invoked the \u201ceternally just principle of \u2018fair for one, fair for all\u2019\u201d to justify destroying the freedom of every worker in the nation. He promised that this proposal, described in his official papers as a Universal Conscription Act, would be a \u201cunifying moral force\u201d and \u201ca means by which every man and woman can find that inner satisfaction which comes from making the fullest possible contribution to victory.\u201d Presumably, the less freedom people had, the more satisfied they\u2019d become. And anyone who did not feel liberated by federal commands was a bastard who deserved all the misery officialdom heaped upon them.<\/p>\n

H.L. Mencken wisely observed: \u201cOne horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.\u201d Americans are still suffering because Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s freedom bunkum was not immediately laughed off the national stage. Any politician who seeks more power today to bestow more freedom in the distant future deserves all the ridicule Americans can heave his way.<\/p>\n

[Reprinted from the Mises Institute and from Foundation for Economic Education]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RealClearHistory, January 6, 2023 FDR’s Corrupt Concept of Freedom The “Four Freedoms” Speech: FDR\u2019s Worst Perversion of Freedom The \u201cfour freedoms\u201d offered citizens no security from the state since it completely ignored the rights guaranteed in the original Bill of Rights that restricted government power. by\u00a0 James Bovard Franklin Roosevelt did more than any other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1114,236,45,3496,648,160],"class_list":["post-17905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-conscription","tag-fdr","tag-freedom","tag-freedom-from-want","tag-mencken","tag-socialism"],"yoast_head":"\nFDR's Corrupt Concept of Freedom - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"President Franklin Roosevelt corrupted Americans' comprehension of freedom\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/06\/fdrs-corrupt-concept-of-freedom\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"FDR's Corrupt Concept of Freedom - 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17905"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17908,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17905\/revisions\/17908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}