On January 6th, 1941, amidst the looming worldwide war crisis unfolding, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered a speech in which he introduced his principle of Four Freedoms that he deemed essential to human existence; these were the freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Several years later, he presented his “Second Bill of Rights,” containing a longer list of rights, particularly expanding upon the third and fourth freedoms, which he deemed necessary for all. These laid the groundwork for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948.

Although these “rights” certainly seem desirable on paper, as many such systems of government control do, it must be taken into consideration that whenever a civil government looks to impose positive sanctions upon its people, this results in a subsequent reduction in freedoms. We will explore each of Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms further in depth, determining whether each promotes or inhibits the rights of the people.

The first of the Four Freedoms is the freedom of speech and expression. This is universally recognized by the existing Constitution and its subsequent First Amendment as an inalienable right possessed by citizens of the United States. We can view this right as a legal immunity from any person or entity that attempts to obstruct this freedom. That is what a right is, in essence. We can fairly simply conclude that the freedom of speech, imposed universally as Roosevelt proposed, would promote liberty among the people.

Secondly, Roosevelt mentions the freedom to worship freely, as any individual sees fit. Along the same lines as the first Freedom, this is a right protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution. This Freedom is not promising anyone a claim on anything; rather, it promises a protection of an inalienable right. Like the first, this as a global principle would not inhibit liberty. As we move into the third and fourth Freedoms, however, we observe a shift from that system of liberty which our founding fathers set into motion over two centuries ago.

With the third Freedom, Roosevelt invokes principles typical of what we would today refer to as the welfare state. This is the universal freedom from want; that is, a system in which the state, rather than the individual, becomes responsible for the economic well-being of the people. This “right” is actually an obstruction of liberty because it implies that people possess a legal claim on something that is not theirs. This hearkens back to Bastiat’s politics of plunder concept; people seem to feel that stealing is immoral unless it is done by a government via majority vote. The state is funded by legal coercion, also known as the legal redistribution of wealth. This, along with the inherent violation of liberty in such instances as that of the employer when jobs are guaranteed by a legal “right,” indicates that this Freedom is misleading in that it actually inhibits freedoms in exchange for promising security.

The fourth and final of the Freedoms is the freedom from fear, which Roosevelt describes as a sort of global peace established by abating means through which acts of violence and aggression can be inflicted among nations. This essentially amounts to a universal disarmament of all nations in order to prevent further hostilities. He proclaimed this, however, in the midst of a worldwide conflict which would soon engulf America. This was a dilemma he had addressed in a 1938 speech:

If there is not general disarmament, we ourselves must continue to arm. It is a step we do not like to take, and do not wish to take. But, until there is general abandonment of weapons capable of aggression, ordinary rules of national prudence and common sense require that we be prepared.

This fourth Freedom does not pertain as much to individual liberty, but it still has a potential of less direct influence. National security is considered to be a governmental duty, but in a disarmed country, what if an outsider were to invade anyway? After all, gaining universal cooperation among every nation seems all but impossible. In an all-or-nothing situation where either no nations or all nations must have the proper means of defending themselves, we are left to wonder what would happen in a scenario where the government has relinquished any means of defending itself. If there were a foreign threat, would individuals have to fend for themselves? What legally protected right would they possess to do this? Would the Second Amendment of the Constitution be upheld in a society in which the national government has been disarmed?

The potential implications of the fourth Freedom in particular are difficult to comprehend when, despite Roosevelt’s assurance to the people over 80 years ago that all four would be “attainable in our own time and generation,” it seems as though a general disarmament would simply leave nations vulnerable in the inevitable case of some sort of conflict or another arising. While a world in which peace is continuous and war nonexistent certainly sounds like a nice prospect, it must be considered that such Utopian ideas are unrealistic in practice due to the inherent flaws of mankind; in this case, it is the simple fact that conflict among humans is unavoidable by nature, due to our inherent imperfections. Attempts by any national or global system of government to achieve this sort of perfect society are ignorant of mankind’s fundamental downfall.

From the above observations, we can thus conclude that while Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms sound promising–particularly to a nation in search of peace and security, mere months away from entering a devastating worldwide conflict–there are more negative implications under these principles than meets the eye, with losses of liberty resulting particularly from the promise of global economic security, which the third Freedom presented as the freedom from want. This, along with the potential ramifications of attempting to achieve global disarmament, pose serious dangers to the inalienable liberties of mankind.🔹