[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 257-258]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   75TH ANNIVERSARY OF FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT'S ``FOUR FREEDOMS'' 
                                 SPEECH

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, tomorrow evening President Obama will come 
before Congress to deliver his annual State of the Union Address.
  America has changed a great deal since President Obama delivered his 
first State of the Union Address 7 years ago. We remember he inherited 
an economy in free fall. There was a real danger that the United States 
would face another Great Depression. Instead, we slid into a great 
recession. The President--President Obama--did all he could to bring 
our economy back to life. Recent economic indicators show that his 
strategy moved us in the right direction. More Americans are working. 
We are seeing prosperity and opportunity return. There are still 
challenges ahead. We still face income inequality, and there are many 
things we must do to make this a fairer nation when it comes to our 
economy, but we avoided a Great Depression because Americans are 
resilient and because our government, under the leadership of President 
Obama, had the courage to take bold action to help put Americans back 
to work and to invest in America's future when the private sector would 
not or could not.
  Our Union--and our future--is undoubtedly stronger today than when 
the President first took office, and I look forward to tomorrow evening 
when we hear this President's hopes and plans for his final year in 
service to our Nation.
  This afternoon I wish to take a few minutes to talk about another 
President and an earlier State of the Union Address. It was 75 years 
ago, on January 6, 1941, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt 
traveled from the White House to Capitol Hill to deliver his annual 
message to the Nation. FDR had been reelected weeks earlier to an 
unprecedented third term as President. Despite historic reforms in 
progress, America was still battling the Great Depression he had 
inherited.
  Pearl Harbor was 11 months in the future. Understandably, many 
Americans wanted to believe that the war that was consuming Europe and 
beginning in the Pacific could remain their problem over there, but 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt sensed that would not be the case. He could 
see America would inevitably be drawn into this conflict.
  In addressing Congress, FDR proposed to make America the ``arsenal of 
democracy.'' He also urged Congress to create a new ``lend lease'' 
program, enabling our historic ally, Great Britain, and their allies to 
withstand the assault of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial 
Japan.
  He did something else. FDR knew that in order for the Nation to face 
World War II, America needed to know not just what they would be 
fighting against but what they would be fighting for. So in some of the 
darkest days of World War II, with Adolf Hitler vowing to impose a new 
order on Europe at gunpoint, Franklin Roosevelt spoke of a moral order 
founded on four essential human freedoms that would be the right of 
every person everywhere. Those four freedoms he spoke of were the 
freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and 
the freedom from fear.
  Norman Rockwell was an amazing American. He was a great illustrator. 
It is interesting that he did so many cover drawings for great 
magazines of his time, such as the Saturday Evening Post. When he heard 
FDR's ``Four Freedoms'' speech given to Congress, it inspired him to 
create images. Those images emerged after the original speech was 
given, and many people credit those images created by Norman Rockwell 
with allowing Americans to visualize what each of the four freedoms 
meant in very human terms.
  I brought copies of them to the floor because they so graphically 
illustrate the message which FDR delivered in his ``Four Freedoms'' 
speech.
  The freedom of speech. This Norman Rockwell illustration shows a 
working man standing and speaking his mind in a townhall meeting.
  Freedom of worship. This photo shows a group of people from different 
backgrounds, each praying to God--the God of his or her understanding.
  Freedom from want. This classic illustration shows a family gathered 
for a Thanksgiving feast.
  The last of the four freedoms is the freedom from fear. This 
illustration shows a mother and father looking at their sleeping 
children tucked safely into bed.
  In the coming struggle, President Roosevelt said, America would 
defend itself not just with arms but also with ``the stamina and 
courage which comes from unshakeable belief in the manner of life that 
we are defending.'' That is exactly what they did.
  During World War II, 16 million Americans--one out of every eight--
put on a uniform and fought for the

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promise of the four freedoms. Tens of millions more Americans back home 
joined the fight by planting victory gardens, recycling everything from 
bacon grease to tin cans, serving as ``soil soldiers'' in the Civilian 
Conservation Corps, and working in war munitions factories as Rosie the 
Riveters.
  After the war, the ``greatest generation,'' as Tom Brokaw 
characterized them, may have given up their uniforms, but they 
continued their fight for FDR's four freedoms. From the earliest days 
of the Roosevelt administration, Franklin and Eleanor had worked to 
rewrite the rules of America's economy to give average workers and 
families a fighting chance against powerful corporations and entrenched 
wealthy special interests. They strengthened labor unions to improve 
workers' pay, working conditions, safety in the workplace, health care, 
retirement--things we take for granted today.
  After the war, the same Americans who had endured the hardships of 
the Depression and who had saved the world from tyranny went to work 
and laid the foundation for the creation of the largest middle class 
and the strongest economy in the history of the world. They built new 
schools, new homes, new towns, an interstate highway system. At the 
same time, more Americans began to challenge longstanding injustices 
based on race, creed, gender, and other distinctions.
  As the historian and author Harvey Kaye writes, under the leadership 
of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, America greatly ``expanded the `we' in 
`we the people.'''
  Under the leadership of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Americans 
saved our Nation's economy from ruin, saved the world from tyranny, and 
they did all this while making America freer, more equal, and more 
democratic than it had ever been.
  The promise of the four freedoms would inspire not only Americans, 
but it inspired the world. The four freedoms became part of the 
preamble to the United Nations ``Universal Declaration of Human 
Rights.'' That declaration, drafted by a committee chaired by the great 
stateswoman Eleanor Roosevelt, represents the first time in history 
that nations around the world agreed to a list of human rights to be 
universally protected.
  My wife Loretta and I are honored to include among our friends Anna 
Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR and Eleanor's granddaughter. She lives in Maine 
now, but she spent most of her life living in my home State of 
Illinois. Similar to her grandparents, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt is full 
of optimism, energy, and a fierce love for this Nation. She has done so 
much to advance her grandparents' efforts to make America freer and 
fairer. I want to say to my friend Anna, America remembers and honors 
your grandparents' legacy. We are a better Nation because of what their 
leadership and sacrifice meant to us.
  As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of FDR's ``Four Freedoms'' 
speech, it is clear that we still have a lot of work to do to make the 
promise of the four freedoms real. Income inequality in America is 
greater today than at any time since just before the Great Depression. 
There are many reasons for America's growing economic inequality, 
including globalization and technology, but the biggest reason is 
nearly 40 years of deliberate political decisions to undo the progress 
of FDR's New Deal and concentrate more and more income and wealth in 
the hands of the few. FDR was right when he said that ``economic laws 
are not made by nature [but] by human beings.''
  I hope this year we can work together to pass laws that will increase 
economic opportunity for all Americans, rebuild America's middle class, 
and free more Americans from the fear of want.
  FDR said that we Americans believe in the four freedoms not just for 
ourselves but for our families, for those who vote as we do or look 
like we do, who live in our neighborhoods and attend our same houses of 
worship, but we believe in the four freedoms for everyone everywhere.
  An America that believes in freedom of worship doesn't allow one 
religious group to deny basic rights to others. Think about our 
Constitution, which each of us in the Senate is sworn to uphold and 
defend. There are only three references in that great document to the 
issue of religion. The first is in the Bill of Rights to guarantee to 
each of us the right to believe as we wish or not to believe; second, 
that our government will never establish a religion; and, third, that 
there will never be a test for qualification for public office 
involving one's religious beliefs.
  Making a religious test for public office or even a religious test 
for immigration is inconsistent with those basic values--inconsistent 
with those four freedoms. Yet even in this Presidential campaign today, 
we hear candidates making that proposal.
  Freedom of speech means allowing others to speak, too, not shouting 
down those who think differently than we do. Democracy works better 
with dialogue, not monologues.
  Years ago when Loretta and I had our first baby, we faced some 
terrific medical challenges. Sadly, we had no health insurance. Let me 
state that as a new father, I was never more frightened in my life. 
Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, 17 million Americans and 
many millions of American parents are now free from that fear, and they 
know that if this act is eliminated, as has been proposed by some 
politicians, there is no alternative, there is no protection, and they 
will face the kind of fear no family should ever face.
  This year, instead of voting over and over to kill the Affordable 
Care Act, I am calling the other party to work to strengthen the law. 
This law isn't perfect, but together we can make the Affordable Care 
Act work better for all American families.
  Freedom from fear also means that Americans shouldn't have to worry 
about getting shot when they are playing in a park, sitting in a movie 
theater, or attending a Bible study class. Even in an election year, we 
ought to be able to find commonsense ways to protect Americans from the 
fear and reality of gun violence. We ought to be able to find a way to 
keep guns out of the wrong hands without undermining basic Second 
Amendment rights. We owe it to America's families to try.
  Seventy-five years ago President Roosevelt saw that America would 
soon be drawn into war. While he didn't live long enough to see 
America's ultimate victory in World War II, his promise of the four 
freedoms helped achieve that victory.
  As we know, the war ended officially with Japan's unconditional 
surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. A member of Japan's 
delegation who attended the surrender went to the ceremony fully 
expecting to hear how the allies intended to take their vengeance on 
the defeated Japanese people. Instead, he heard General MacArthur speak 
about the future of freedom for Japan. Years later, he wrote that it 
was at that ceremony that he understood that ``we weren't beaten on the 
battlefield by the dint of superior arms; we were defeated in the 
spiritual conquest by virtue of a nobler idea.'' That idea--the 
inherent human dignity of every person--is the belief at the heart of 
the four freedoms. Those freedoms remain as powerful a weapon for peace 
and progress today as they were 75 years ago. I hope we will remember 
that this year.

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