The Enduring
Significance of FDR's Broad Theory of Freedom (Diario Economic, Portugal)
"In
addition to being associated with decisive events in the history of the United
States and the world (from the New Deal to the
creation of the United Nations), President Roosevelt was also the one who, in
the most impressive manner, expressed the notion that freedom isn't just about
personal, civil and political liberty against the state, however crucial these
may be. Rather, it also includes the freedom against economic and social constraints
that suppress the enjoyment of those previously mentioned freedoms. … As Roosevelt
said, 'necessitous men are not free men,' or in other words, 'those who suffer
from deprivation are not free.' These are vital matters that apply to all."
Participatingin the
recent(and excellent) conference
ofFrancisco
Manuel dos Santos Foundation for Freedom [right column, first video],
it occurred to me to invokeRooseveltto counterthe
currentneoliberaldrift thatwants to reducethenotionof freedom"negative
freedom," i.e., to individual
autonomyagainst the authorities,denyingthe roleof
social rights asa factor in the enjoymentof thosefreedomsby
all.
In fact, in addition
to being associated with decisive events in the history of the U.S. and the
world (from the New Deal to
the creation of the United Nations), President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was also the one who, in
the most impressive manner, expressed the notion that freedom isn't just about
personal, civil and political liberty against the state, however crucial these
may be. Rather, it also includes the freedom against economic and social constraints
that suppress the enjoyment of those previously mentioned freedoms.
Posted
By Worldmeets.US
As early as 1941,
Roosevelt addressed Congress in what came to be known as the discourse on the "four freedoms," which
remains a landmark in the history of the theory of freedom in the United States
[video in right column, top]. Paired with the freedom of speech and the freedom
of worship came, unexpectedly, the "freedom from want" and the "freedom
from fear." What is important to note is that only the first two were part
of the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. The other two freedoms were a
radical change in American political discourse.
The four freedoms: uniting individual
rights and the collective rights
that make individual liberty possible.
Three years later,
in 1944, with the war dragging on, Roosevelt delivered another speech [right column, third video] in which he returned to the theme of a broad notion of freedom, with
a new set of rights that Europe would call "social rights," among
which are the right to employment, education, health,
housing, etc. Rightly known as the "Second Bill of Rights,"
this no less remarkable speech by the president of the United States would have
a decisive influence on the formulation of the "positive" rights laid
out in the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, in which incidentally, his widow Eleanor
Roosevelt played a major role, and whose preamble explicitly invokes the four
freedoms of 1941.
When,
after enduring an "apartheid" caused by the Cold War between rights of
liberty and social rights, neo-liberalism insisted on favoring the former and denying
the latter (along with the notion of welfare state). It is important to recall
the Rooseveltian conception that includes both in the
theory of freedom. Nearly 70 years after Roosevelt's death - to be celebrated
next year, his broad notion of freedom is not only about the autonomy of the
individual, but a condition for the realization of human achievement, and is as
important today as it was when it was formulated.
As Roosevelt said, "necessitous
men are not free men," or in other words, "those who suffer from deprivation
are not free." These are vital matters that apply to all.
