03.04 FREE FROM FEAR
Economic/Political Analysis
Are the poor and the wealthy equally concerned about the “freedom from fear”?
Compare and contrast both speeches to answer this question.
When we look at The Four Freedoms speech by Franklin D. Roosevelt alongside the Welcoming
Remarks by President Obama, we may see that they might produce slightly different answers to the same
questions. The people who might have heard FDR’s speech were I believe all equally concerned at the
threat the war posed, whether they were rich or poor. The people who heard Obama’s speech might have
been slightly more insensitive to what ‘freedom from fear’ can really feel like when you live in fear.
In FDR’s speech, he is addressing a people who stand with the dread of the war looming before them; a
people who have only just recovered from the perils and hardships of the depression. In the depression
these people saw everybody affected by the economy, not just the poor people but poor and rich alike.
Most all of these people without a doubt would fear what the war could do to all of them, and would no
doubt fear making some kind of action related to the war. But Roosevelt speaks to them saying, “The
need of the moment is that our actions and our policy should be devoted primarily–almost exclusively–to
meeting this foreign peril. For all our domestic problems is now a part of the great emergency.” Meaning
that the only way to eliminate the fear that cripples the people is to take a step forward and do something
to further the efforts of the war.
Although Obama was only directly speaking to a smaller group of people, many people would have heard
what the President said. Although he speak of many people when he talks of what the alliance between
the US and UN will do for the nation, it is likely that there was a great deal of people who couldn’t care
less about what he said. Many people have become insensitive to the struggles that others around them
face because we are such a privileged nation, and the majority of people have very consistent lives. We do
not often have to struggle to live from day to day, or worry about if we will be able to eat or get health
care. While the majority of people aren’t ‘rich’ so to speak, we are a very wealth and well provided for
nation as of today. Because of this, having freedom from fear is not something that many people would
feel they have to seek for themselves, but perhaps for others. “We believe in the universal rights of all
people, so we stand united in our support for those who seek to choose their leaders and forge their
future…” States President Obama in his welcoming speech to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
I think that both texts deal with freeing people from the weight of fear, but they both have very different
targets. Although they are both meant to be heard by the people of the United States, it is my firm belief
that as a whole, the people addressed in Obama’s speech do not have the same fear weighting down on
them that people in FDR’s time had. This is because the rich and the poor had greater dividers in the time
of Roosevelt’s speech, while nowadays there is more of a middle class society where there are not large
groups of people that have to struggle on a daily biases. So in simple words, rich and poor people no
doubt feel fear in different ways, but the people addressed in both Obama’s and FDR’s speeches were all
under very different, unique circumstances. …