Question

How does FDR define “liberty” or “freedom”? How does he relate the struggles of the Great Depression to the struggles of the American Revolution? Why did he so often use the idea of freedom to get his message across?

Answer 1

President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave this speech in Philadelphia at the Democratic National Convention in 1936, at which he was nominated for a second term. In it, he explained why New Deal reforms and spending programs were necessary. Roosevelt likened the 1930s struggle with monopolists and big business “tyrants” to the Patriots’ efforts to establish political freedom in the 1770s.

In his 1932 run for the presidency, Roosevelt asserted that he would help “the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid,” and pledged himself to “a new deal for the American people.” In his First Inaugural Address, saying “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he sought to reassure the public amid the anxieties of the Great Depression.

As president he championed the series of federal legislative initiatives known as the New Deal. The New Deal was not a blueprint for action, but was instead animated by a spirit, as Roosevelt said, of “bold, persistent experimentation,” in which he would “take a method and try it: if it fails, admit it frankly and try another".

On January 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addresses Congress in an effort to move the nation away from a foreign policy of neutrality.

On 6 January 1941, the United States was not yet involved in World War 2. In fact, sentiment in America was largely isolationist. President Franklin Roosevelt, in his State of the Union address broke with that tradition, citing four freedoms that he perceived as under threat from the ongoing war, and which should be protected as global and universal. In his original speech, Roosevelt defined these freedoms as follows:

1. Freedom of speech and expression, everywhere in the world.
2. Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way, everywhere in the world.
3. Freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understanding that will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants; everywhere in the world.
4. Freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a worldwide 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 neighbour; anywhere in the world.