{"id":2752,"date":"2011-05-10T11:34:20","date_gmt":"2011-05-10T16:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=2752"},"modified":"2011-05-10T11:34:20","modified_gmt":"2011-05-10T16:34:20","slug":"franklin-roosevelts-four-freedoms-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/10\/franklin-roosevelts-four-freedoms-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the February issue of the Future of Freedom Foundation’s <\/a>Freedom Daily<\/strong><\/a> – <\/p>\n

Roosevelt\u2019s \u201cFour Freedoms\u201d Fraud<\/strong>
\nby James Bovard<\/p>\n

President Obama has succeeded in seizing new power over health care and other swaths of American lives in part because previous presidents muddied Americans\u2019 understanding of freedom. <\/p>\n

Most of the past century\u2019s debates over the meaning of liberty have featured one politician after another who promised people true freedom, if only they would submit to increased government power. In the process, politicians have been generously shrinking people\u2019s individual liberty. <\/p>\n

The clearest political turning point in the American understanding of freedom came during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. He often invoked freedom, but almost always as a pretext for increasing government power. He proclaimed in 1933, \u201cWe have all suffered in the past from individualism run wild.\u201d Naturally, the corrective was to allow government to run wild. <\/p>\n

Roosevelt declared in a 1934 fireside chat, \u201cI am not for a return of that definition of liberty under which for many years a free people were being gradually regimented into the service of the privileged few.\u201d Politicians such as Roosevelt began by telling people that control of their own lives was a mirage; thus, they lost nothing when government took over. <\/p>\n

In his renomination acceptance speech at the 1936 Democratic Party convention, Roosevelt declared that \u201cthe privileged princes of these new economic dynasties … created a new despotism…. The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor \u2014 these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship.\u201d But if wages were completely dictated by the \u201cindustrial dictatorship\u201d \u2014 why were pay rates higher in the United States than anywhere else in the world, and why had pay rates increased rapidly in the decades before 1929? Roosevelt never considered limiting government intervention to safeguarding individual choice; instead, he favored multiplying power to impose \u201cgovernment-knows-best\u201d dictates on work hours, wages, and contracts. <\/p>\n

New improved freedom<\/strong> <\/p>\n

On January 6, 1941, he gave his famous \u201cFour Freedoms\u201d speech, promising citizens freedom of speech, freedom of worship \u2014 and then he got creative: \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 the government henceforth must fill the role in daily life previously filled by God and religion. His 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, already protected by the First Amendment. <\/p>\n

Roosevelt\u2019s list of new freedoms liberated government while making a pretense of liberating the citizen. It offered citizens no security from the state, since it completely ignored the rights protected by the Second Amendment (the right 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). Roosevelt\u2019s revised freedoms also ignored the Ninth Amendment, which specifies that the listing of \u201ccertain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people,\u201d as well as the Tenth Amendment, which specified that \u201cpowers not delegated\u201d to the federal government are reserved to the states or to the people. <\/p>\n

And, even though Roosevelt included freedom of speech in his new, improved list of progressive freedoms, he added, <\/p>\n

A free nation has the right to expect full cooperation from all groups…. … We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests…. <\/p>\n

The best way of dealing with the few slackers or troublemakers 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

Thus, the \u201cnew freedom\u201d required that government have power to suppress any group not actively supporting the government\u2019s goals. (The United States was still at peace at the time of Roosevelt\u2019s speech.) The expansions of freedoms in the list were promised to the whole world \u2014 primarily people who did not vote in U.S. elections \u2014 while the implicit contractions of previously sanctified freedoms would affect only Americans. <\/p>\n

Roosevelt elaborated on his concept of freedom in his 1944 State of the Union address. He declared that the original Bill of Rights had \u201cproved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.\u201d He called for a \u201cSecond Bill of Rights,\u201d and asserted, \u201cTrue individual freedom can\u2019t exist without economic security.\u201d And security, according to Roosevelt, included \u201cthe right to a useful and remunerative job,\u201d \u201cdecent home,\u201d \u201cgood health,\u201d and \u201cgood education.\u201d Thus, if a government school did not teach all fifth-graders to read, the nonreaders would be considered oppressed. Or, if someone was in bad health, then that person would be considered as having been deprived of his freedom, and somehow it would be seen as the government\u2019s fault. 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 \u2014 a nonsensical concept that would require setting food prices high enough to keep the nation\u2019s least efficient farmer behind his mule and plow. <\/p>\n

Roosevelt clarified the necessary underpinnings of his new freedom when, in the same speech, he called for 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 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 satisfaction they would enjoy. <\/p>\n

Commenting on foreign policy, Roosevelt praised Soviet Russia as one of the \u201cfreedom-loving Nations\u201d and stressed that Marshal Stalin was \u201cthoroughly conversant with the provisions of our Constitution.\u201d Roosevelt\u2019s concept of freedom required people to blindly trust their leaders \u2014 a trust he greatly abused. He also denounced those Americans with \u201csuspicious souls\u201d who feared that he had \u201cmade \u2018commitments\u2019 for the future which might pledge this Nation to secret treaties\u201d at the summit of Allied leaders in Tehran the previous month. But at that summit, he had secretly agreed to allow Stalin to move the Soviet border far to the West \u2014 thus consigning millions of Poles to life under direct Soviet rule. (Roosevelt and Stalin used roughly the same dividing line that Hitler and Stalin had used in 1939 to divide Poland into Nazi and Soviet spheres.) <\/p>\n

Praise for increased power <\/strong>
\nThough Roosevelt continually seized power long after he gave the Four Freedoms speech, that oration is the one that is most frequently invoked by subsequent presidents to sanctify their own power grabs. President George H.W. Bush, speaking on the 50th anniversary of the Four Freedoms speech, called Roosevelt \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 The elder Bush loved to invoke the Four Freedoms speech in his appeals to vastly expand the federal war on drug users. <\/p>\n

President Clinton declared in October 1996, <\/p>\n

In Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s view, government should be the perfect public system for fostering and protecting the \u201cFour Freedoms\u201d…. Roosevelt … enumerated these freedoms not as abstract ideals but as goals toward which Americans \u2014 and caring people everywhere \u2014 could direct their most strenuous public efforts. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other speeches, Clinton made it clear that the government needed vastly more power to give Americans \u201cfreedom from fear\u201d (except for fear of the government). <\/p>\n

Roosevelt\u2019s Four Freedoms speech provides a push-button invocation for any U.S. president who wants to sound as though he cares about liberty. President George W. Bush invoked Roosevelt in perhaps his most fraudulent speech \u2014 his \u201cMission Accomplished\u201d strut aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003: <\/p>\n

Our commitment to liberty is America\u2019s tradition \u2014 declared at our founding; affirmed in Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s Four Freedoms; asserted in the Truman Doctrine and in Ronald Reagan\u2019s challenge to an evil empire…. When freedom takes hold, men and women turn to the peaceful pursuit of a better life. American values and American interests lead in the same direction: We stand for human liberty. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And any Iraqi or Afghan who refused to submit to the Bush-definition of freedom automatically forfeited his right to live. <\/p>\n

Bush also invoked Roosevelt in his November 2003 speech to the National Endowment for Democracy celebrating its 20 years of interfering with foreign elections: \u201cThe advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country. From the Fourteen Points to the Four Freedoms … America has put our power at the service of principle. We believe that liberty is the design of nature; we believe that liberty is the direction of history.\u201d <\/p>\n

Bush had a great belief in freedom in the abstract, as long as no one tried to meddle with his boundless power. For Bush to be invoking freedom \u2014 after he suspended habeas corpus, authorized torture, and destroyed much of Americans\u2019 privacy \u2014 was typical of the shenanigans that politicians have long gotten away with in this country. <\/p>\n

Bush again invoked Roosevelt in a March 2005 speech to the National Defense University, trying to vindicate his war on terror as part of \u201ca consistent theme of American strategy \u2014 from [President Wilson\u2019s] Fourteen Points, to the Four Freedoms, to the Marshall plan, to the Reagan Doctrine…. We are confident that the desire for freedom, even when repressed for generations, is present in every human heart.\u201d <\/p>\n

Bush may have given this particular speech to a military audience because the officers knew that they could not laugh outloud at his absurdities without wrecking their careers. Unfortunately, Americans are still paying a price because Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s freedom demagoguery was not laughed off the national stage decades ago. <\/p>\n

H.L. Mencken wisely observed, \u201cOne horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.\u201d Any politician who seeks more power now to give people more freedom at some distant future point deserves all the derision Americans can heap upon him. Citizens should not tolerate any president who invokes freedom as he tramples the Bill of Rights. <\/p>\n

James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy [2006] as well as The Bush Betrayal [2004], Lost Rights [1994] and Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice and Peace to Rid the World of Evil (Palgrave-Macmillan, September 2003)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the February issue of the Future of Freedom Foundation’s Freedom Daily – Roosevelt\u2019s \u201cFour Freedoms\u201d Fraud by James Bovard President Obama has succeeded in seizing new power over health care and other swaths of American lives in part because previous presidents muddied Americans\u2019 understanding of freedom. Most of the past century\u2019s debates over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[676,677,656,7,673,45,662,669,38,31],"class_list":{"0":"post-2752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-clinton","8":"tag-democracy","9":"tag-dictatorship","11":"tag-freedom","13":"tag-lying","14":"tag-obama","16":"tag-wool"},"yoast_head":"\nFranklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" Fraud - James Bovard<\/title>\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\/2011\/05\/10\/franklin-roosevelts-four-freedoms-fraud\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Franklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" Fraud - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From the February issue of the Future of Freedom Foundation’s Freedom Daily – Roosevelt\u2019s \u201cFour Freedoms\u201d Fraud by James Bovard President Obama has succeeded in seizing new power over health care and other swaths of American lives in part because previous presidents muddied Americans\u2019 understanding 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. 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