On January 6, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his famous “Four Freedoms” speech to a nation that really didn’t want to hear it. After World War I, many in the United States were strongly opposed to entering into another war if it didn’t directly affect our country. Hitler and his Nazi party took control in Germany in 1933. From that point on, he began to live out his ideals for the elimination of other races, ethnicities, and religions. He began invading and annexing other European countries in order to eliminate those who were not part of his image for Germany, as well as expand to areas for Germans to spread out and live. He was brutal and evil – but he wasn’t quiet. His actions were certainly known throughout Europe as well as the United States.
But people in the United States did not want to be involved; it wasn’t our concern. By and large, we were tired – first from WWI and then from the Great Depression. Yet the atrocities that were being committed by the Nazis in Germany and then spreading throughout Europe really were our concern.
President Roosevelt explained this in his speech that he gave 75 years ago. He said, “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…This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.”
Remember that our freedom is tied to supremacy of human rights everywhere. When a man asked Jesus who his neighbor was, Jesus responded with a story of the Good Samaritan and then asked the man who he thought the neighbor to be. He replied, “The one who showed mercy.” Jesus told him and all of us, “Go and do likewise.” Let us all remember to be neighbors to people throughout the world.
