Four Freedoms

Good Morning.

We're all familiar with the "Four Freedoms", right? These were enumerated by President Roosevelt in a state of the union address given on the eve of WWII. (January 6, 1941). They put the war in more human terms, and became a rallying cry for the home front for those long years of struggle.

The four freedoms are Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear. As President Roosevelt stated in that address so long ago:

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.

Eleanor Roosevelt took those four freedoms as her personal mission statement, and eventually incorporated those ideas into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.



Last night, I learned of a new set of Four Freedoms. Late in his career, Duke Ellington wrote and performed a series of "Concerts of Sacred Music". These have become a staple of the Christmas Season here in Boston, being played annually by WGBH's Eric Jackson during Christmas week as part of the jazz program, "Eric in the Evening". These recordings have been out of print for decades, but the Second Sacred concert has just been re-issued on CD. This was recorded at St. John the Divine in New York City in 1968. During the passage titled "Freedom", Duke Ellington speaks of his late 'writing and arranging companion', Billy Strayhorn, and enumerates the four freedoms that guided his life. I found them equally remarkable, and thought that everyone should know about them.

Freedom from hate

Freedom from self pity

Freedom from fear of doing something that would benefit someone else more than it would himself

Freedom from the pride that could make him feel that he was better than others.

This struck a chord with me last night as I was listening to the concert; perhaps they will touch something in you too.