Fargo Freedom

By Cindy Gomez
Editor

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, 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. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

—Franklin D. Roosevelt, excerpted from the State of the Union Address to the Congress, January 6, 1941

While it is widely known the first two freedoms are the basis of our constitutional rights protected under the first amendment, it is less well known the four freedoms were the basis of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s work on the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. In fact, the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes all four of the freedoms, stating, “Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed the highest aspiration of the common people…”

With such lofty and noble intentions behind the four freedoms, one wonders why only two of the freedoms are protected rights under our U.S. Constitution. Why, when the nations of the world have agreed that all four freedoms should be the “highest aspiration” of people “everywhere in the world,” do we—the greatest nation, home of the free—choose to adopt and protect only two?

We would be hard-pressed to find a single person who disagreed that we should all enjoy these freedoms. Yet we do not demand them or their protection. And even though we know that neither freedom of religion nor freedom of speech can be protected from attack, that has not stopped us from espousing these beliefs and protecting them vigorously in the founding documents of our nation. Waco is a great example of what was perceived by many as an assault by the federal government on the personal freedom of religion. Yet after Waco, we didn’t drop the First Amendment from the Constitution.

We didn’t get rid of the First Amendment and the right of expression and freedom of press when the Patriot Act emerged; and that Act significantly changed and weakened the public’s freedom of speech. While the media was scrambling to cover the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the terrorist attacks worldwide following 9/11, the public was learning—through its media—that criticism of the president or his foreign policy would be met with charges of “Anti-Americanism.” Public figures and news media that publicly criticized or even dared to show the realities of war were silenced as sympathizers and traitors. The idea that the press or public figures would put us all at risk if they publicly condemned the acts of the president was a monumental step toward silencing information to the people, thereby silencing the people themselves. It is difficult for us to exercise our right to express outrage at our government or its policies when we aren’t even being told what those policies really are.

On a human level we know that people dying from “want” have the right to live and prosper, wherever they can. But on a policy level, America has convincingly argued that the Constitution does not protect “freedom from fear” and “freedom from want” because they are not enforceable rights. In other words, we cannot control “economies” because we promote free trade and capitalism. As we embrace free enterprise, we tell ourselves that there is nothing sinister about the unrestricted powers of unregulated—and often unscrupulous—entrepreneurs. We are still feeling the aftershocks of the bailouts, and likely will for more than one generation.

And despite the political pressure and policy-making might wielded by these bailed-out corporations, our Supreme Court has ruled that Corporations have unfettered access to influence policy makers as “people”—equal to humans. Rather than rein in the powers which corporations have been using irresponsibly to lower labor standards in the U.S., pollute the lands, contaminate our food and water sources, and make enterprise for the “little guy” inequitable, we instead empower them to further their gain and widen the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” Then we are outraged when impoverished and persecuted people from foreign lands escape to American soil to find “freedom from want.”

You could also reasonably argue that we cannot control “actions” by other countries that could threaten us. Therefore we must fear the worst, and proactively protect ourselves with arms. And while we lull ourselves into the belief that we are correct on that count, we also shut out the reality that through policies—like the Patriot Act—we lead less private lives, are more fearful to speak out, are less safe, and have more public unrest than ever. We begin to operate on fear of the foreign and the foreigner. Even locally, we hear of people being randomly checked by border patrol for proof of identity. While our government acts as if it is working hard to protect us from—all too often—unknown and unseen foreign enemies, we are losing important personal freedoms that people fought and died for throughout the history of this country.

By ignoring the basic principles of human decency represented in the four freedoms, specifically those we currently don’t protect in this country, we continue to spiral into deeper economic crisis and wider reaching economic injustice. By spreading fear instead of dispelling it; we are breeding an atmosphere of “attack before being attacked” and “blame the oppressed, not the oppressor.”

As members of the United Nations and of the world, we here on American soil should be asking ourselves how much longer we can afford to ignore the prophetic words of F.D.R.

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