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Elizabeth Borgwardt, FDR's Four Freedoms as a Human Rights Instrument, OAH Magazine of History, Volume 22, Issue 2, April 2008, Pages 8–13, https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/22.2.8
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Do ideas ever change history? In January 1941, as the German Luftwaffe bombed London, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his annual State of the Union Address to Congress. He used the speech to sketch a vision of justice and fairness that contrasted starkly with Adolf Hitler's totalitarian ideology. He asserted that “four essential human freedoms” should apply “everywhere in the world”: Freedom of speech and religion, and, most radically, freedom from fear and want (1).
Why were these ideas radical? The key to FDR's Four Freedoms was their international scope, and the way they linked human rights ideals at home to human rights ideals abroad. People who heard or read FDR's words were inspired by them, and adapted the speech's underlying ideas to support their own struggles for human rights-related agendas such as fighting racism, struggling for economic justice, and supporting international cooperation. As the postwar era unfolded, sometimes it was the people who felt the most disappointed in the unfulfilled promises of the Four Freedoms who were able to accomplish the most thoroughgoing changes.
