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Home , Carlos Bulosan, Four Freedoms, Four Freedoms (Rockwell), Freedom from fear, Freedom from want

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REVISITING THE FOUR By Donald M. Bishop

PHOTO: The Franklin D. Roosevelt Park, located on an island in New York's East River, opened in 2012

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Modern political warfare now includes both cyber and information operations. At MCU, Bren Chair of Strategic Communications Donald Bishop focuses his teaching and presentations on the “information” or “influence” dimension of conflict – disinformation, , persuasion, hybrid warfare – now enabled by the internet and social media. And he emphasizes that Americans, as they confront violent extremism and other threats, must know and be confident of the American values they defend.

"Thanks, Grandpa, for coming to my game." Why look back at The Four Freedoms? First, in my classes at Marine Corps University, I’ve discovered that the current "I enjoyed it too, Jack. We men in our eighties don't get generation of Marines have never heard of them. Of Norman out as often as we wish. Seeing you score a run was Rockwell’s four famous paintings, they have seen only one – something. But you know, I noticed something else today. the family at Thanksgiving – and they don’t know they were "When you were at the plate, it carried me back to part of a series. Second – when Americans must articulate watching my older brother in the batter's box. You held the “what we’re for” (rather than “what we’re against”) – whether bat like he did. You have the same stance and the same in the war on terrorism or in a future of great power competi- swing. When you hit the ball, I felt a tug in my heart, you tion – it’s worthwhile to examine whether the Four Freedoms so reminded me of him." still usefully express American values.

"Do you mean my great uncle Jack, the one who was killed in the war?" President Roosevelt’s Insight "Yes, his last high school games were in the spring of 1944. In our own time, each annual Address is I was twelve. He joined the Marines right afterwards. It months in the making. Speechwriters prepare drafts that are broke all our hearts when he was killed on Okinawa — reviewed by the President’s inner circle. Cabinet secretaries the last great battle. and agency heads provide input. Word choices in the speech may be focus grouped. There are many personal reviews of "I've kept the medals they sent my parents afterward. drafts by the President. Here's his Purple Heart. The one with the yellow ribbon has In 1941, however, these Four Freedoms were not formulated a single campaign star — for Okinawa. And this World War II by a speechwriting staff or the President’s brain Victory Medal always gets me thinking. trust. President Roosevelt dictated them personally late in the "We knew what we were fighting against – Hitler's evening of New Year’s Day, 1941. Germany and imperial Japan. Against aggression and FDR may have borrowed the “four freedoms” frame from surprise attacks. But this medal also tells us what we were the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the Constitution fighting for. Look at the back side of the medal. What's it say? in 1937. The sesquicentennial celebrated the four freedoms listed in the First Amendment – of “Speech,” “Press,” " and religion. and fear." “Religion,” and “Assembly.” At the 1939 World’s Fair in Flushing "Yes, we called them the Four Freedoms. Have you seen Meadows, New York, four huge sculptures by Leo Friedlander the paintings?" represented these four First Amendment freedoms in a central square. Just a few years later, however, President Roosevelt’s list was a different one. He named and explained them in In his State of the Union Address of January 6, 1941, President twelve sentences at the end of the address. Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress for authority to provide Lend-Lease assistance to the United Kingdom. To strengthen In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward his appeal, FDR traced a vision of “a world founded upon four to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. essential human freedoms.” The first is freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world. “The Four Freedoms” eventually became shorthand for the The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own war aims of the Allies in their struggle with fascism. The power way – everywhere in the world. of The Four Freedoms did not, however, rest on the President’s The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world words alone. They were elaborated in speeches, articles, terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every sermons, books, music, and paintings, and a private-public nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in campaign brought them to millions at home and abroad. the world.

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The fourth is , which, translated into world than tariffs, for instance, allows people in each nation to terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point earn livelihoods when they provide goods and services to and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position whomever needs them. Fair trade without subsidies and to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – rigged exchange rates is another 'economic understanding' anywhere in the world. that has to be part of the free trade package. Trade goes a That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for long way to eliminate 'want.' Protecting patents, copyrights, a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind and trademarks on an international basis also allows each of world is the very antithesis of the so-called ‘new order’ of tyranny nation to keep the rewards of its own work and productivity. which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb. To that new order we oppose the greater conception – the moral order. "Not to mention, Jack, that America has generously A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and shared its knowledge of crops and agriculture and animal foreign revolutions alike without fear. Since the beginning of our husbandry. Across the world, American agricultural science American history we have been engaged in change, in a perpetual, has allowed fewer farmers to keep pace with growing pop- peaceful revolution, a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly, ulations. Yes, there's hunger in the world, but it's almost adjusting itself to changing conditions without the concentration always caused by the dislocations of war and tyranny, not camp or the quicklime in the ditch. The world order which we seek because farmers or herders or ranchers can't produce." is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society. portrays Presidents launch many slogans while campaigning and governing. Most prove ephemeral. The Four Freedoms, as we the Four Freedoms shall see, took hold in the public mind, and during the global In after the , an American artist conflict they became shorthand for the war aims of the Allies. known for his magazine covers and posters was possessed by They helped shape the “certain common principles” of the a desire to “take the Four Freedoms out of the noble language , issued by President Roosevelt and Prime and put them in terms everybody can understand.” The result Minister Churchill on August 14, 1941. was Norman Rockwell’s four famous paintings. After President Roosevelt first articulated them, other In the 1920s and 1930s, Rockwell had become famous as a Americans spontaneously fleshed out The Four Freedoms in magazine illustrator. His magazine covers are still collected magazine articles, essays, sermons, books, and art. In February and studied both as art and as Americana. 1943, the Postal Service printed nearly 1.3 billion one-cent Rockwell’s “Freedom of Speech” showed an ordinary work- Four Freedoms stamps, and another was issued after the ingman speaking at a Vermont town meeting, while his better President’s death in 1945. off neighbors (the ones wearing neckties) listen respectfully. President Roosevelt commissioned a Four Freedoms monu- In “Freedom from Fear,” a couple looks down on their ment by sculptor Walter Russell. Unveiled in 1943 in Madison sleeping children. The rag doll on the floor and the bed that’s Square Garden, it can now be seen in Madison, Florida. too large for the small attic room show the family’s modest Four Freedoms murals were painted in Burbank, circumstances. The father’s newspaper tells the story; the (by Hugo Ballin) and Newark, New Jersey (by Michael Lenson). headline reads “bombings” and “terror.” Irving Berlin’s “Song of Freedom” was sung by “Freedom to Worship” provided a collage of worshippers. in the 1942 film Holiday Inn. Composer Robert Russell There’s no overt mark of the religion of the characters in Bennett wrote a “Four Freedoms Symphony” the next year. the center of the painting, but they no doubt represent the A special Four Freedoms honor flag was flown at parades and majority Protestant denominations. Significantly, the figure public ceremonies. shown partially in the upper left of the painting is African American. Previously, only whites could be portrayed in "But Grandpa, did President Roosevelt mean that people paintings commissioned by the publisher, and the figure’s in every nation, not just ours, were owed freedom of breakthrough inclusion here represents another stream of speech and freedom to worship? Shouldn't we only care American Christianity. The woman on the left, with the about our own country?" braid over her hair, holding a rosary, is Catholic, perhaps "FDR meant what he said – 'everywhere in the world.' an immigrant. In the lower right, the man wears a songkok, a It's beyond our power to change every nation that violates Muslim prayer cap popular in Southeast Asia. those freedoms, for sure. But I think Americans must The final painting, “Freedom from Want,” portrayed an always stand fast for these principles and, at the least, American family on Thanksgiving. In my experience teaching call out those nations – like China and North Korea and Marines, this is the only one of the four paintings they have the Islamic State – which violate them." seen before. Rockwell failed to find a sponsor for his project among "And what about 'freedom from want'? Do Americans have the wartime agencies in Washington, but the Curtis Publishing to feed the world?" Company agreed to run the paintings in four consecutive "Look again at what President Roosevelt said, Jack. He said issues of The Saturday Evening Post in February and March there should be 'economic understandings.' Free trade rather of 1943.

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On its own initiative, the magazine commissioned four So deeply did the paintings affect the American public that essays to accompany the paintings. Rockwell received 60,000 letters offering thanks, reflections, and suggestions. "You should find copies of the four essays on the internet, The paintings became American icons – recognized as Jack. They were written by four of that day's literary giants. instantly as the Rosenthal photograph of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” or the video images of "In what he called a 'parable' to illustrate Freedom of the falling twin towers on September 11, 2001. Speech, imagined young Hitler and young It was the paintings that became the core of a major opinion Mussolini meeting in a mountain chalet, confessing to campaign launched in wartime. The Treasury Department and each other their will to power, unafraid to use 'the purge' The Saturday Evening Post sponsored a Four Freedoms War to gain it. Bond Show, exhibiting the paintings around the nation. The " wrote the essay on Freedom from Want. opening of the tour at Hecht’s department store in Washington It contrasted the President's high ideal against the reality was broadcast nationwide, with Lowell Thomas as master of hunger during the Depression and in the war. Since of ceremonies and Justice William O. Douglas as the main Bulsosan was an immigrant from the Philippines, you speaker. Each person who bought a received a set can feel in the essay his desire for acceptance of new of Four Freedoms prints. The campaign raised $130 million Americans. He gave me a lot to think about. ($1.92 billion in 2019 dollars). The Office of War Information (OWI) belatedly realized the "Stephen Vincent Benet – there's a big name in , did you know that the whole 'Planet of the Apes' power of the project it had once dismissed and printed another movie series was inspired by one Benet story? His Four 2.5 million copies, accompanied by a long OWI essay. It began: Freedoms essay spoke of humankind's long aspiration for Freedom from Fear, with 'saints and martyrs and prophets Beyond the war lies the peace. Both sides have sketched the outlines – and the common people' making their contributions over of the new world toward which they strain. The leaders of the Axis the centuries. countries have published their design for all to read. They promise a world in which the conquered peoples will live out their lives in the "And you must read Will Durant's essay on 'Freedom to service of their masters. Worship.' One sentence really jumped out at me the first The , now engaged in a common cause, have also time I read it. Speaking of the dictators, he wrote a 'good published their design, and have committed certain common aims to man who is not great is a hundred times more precious writing. * * * The freedoms we are fighting for, we who are free: the than a great man who is not good.' Think about the world's freedoms for which the men and women in the concentration camps capitals when you read that. and prisons and in the dark streets of the subjugated countries wait, "Here's another Durant quote. He said that 'freedom of are four in number. body and soul, of movement and enterprise, of thought and utterance, of faith and worship, of hope and charity' Note how both the President and the Office of War are the 'most precious gifts in the orbit of life.' 'If our sons Information placed the freedoms ahead of the atrocities that and brothers accomplish this … it will be an achievement violated them. This surely helped frame many awful events beside which all the triumphs of Alexander, Caesar, and for ordinary people in the and abroad. Until war Napoleon will be a little thing.' Talk about words to live by! came, most were coping with the down home problems of the Depression. When international events intruded on their lives, The paintings made publishing history. More than 25,000 the Four Freedoms gave Americans and the allies four lenses to readers purchased sets, suitable for framing, from the magazine. interpret what they learned.

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painting. Both Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas are major "I had many privileged glimpses collectors of Rockwell’s work. The into the human condition, but I in Stockbridge, , is the permanent home of the never once saw human beings Four Freedoms paintings, but the Museum frequently loans them for exhibit elsewhere. flee the freedom of speech; The contours and reach of American freedoms are currently I never saw families on the being debated, and some challenge their received meanings. Don’t some Americans fear the police, or gun owners? Should run from the free practice of there be limits on hate speech? Does religious freedom allow religion in the public square; some individuals to be exempt from general laws and rul- ings? Should the nation do more to reduce “want” among and as a young Marine, I never Americans? Do new social insights and the public contention picked anybody out of a raft on over American freedoms mean America has changed since the the ocean desperate to escape Second World War? I think rather that a continuity of American ideals – the “why a free press." we fight,” perhaps – joins, rather than divides, World War II and the current conflict. Here and there the Four Freedoms JAMES MATTIS, MAY 15, 2018 and the Norman Rockwell paintings seem to hearken back to a passed yesteryear. But deeper contemplation shows how well they endure. Thus Nazi book burnings and executions of political oppo- The totalitarian evils addressed by the Four Freedoms nents violated Freedom of Speech. There was no Freedom are still recognizable 75 years later. Then, the aircraft were from Fear when bombs fell in London and Chungking. When Heinkels and Bettys. Now they are hijacked airliners and Americans saw films of hungry Chinese refugees, they felt ICBMs. President Roosevelt spoke of “the quick lime in the more keenly their own Freedom from Want. And as the death ditch.” The military defeat of ISIS has allowed the unearthing camps were liberated and Hitler’s “Final Solution” became of the ditches and the victims. The many creative people who known, Americans knew the meaning of Freedom to Worship. fleshed out President Roosevelt’s expression of free values still So powerful were Rockwell’s portrayals and so extensive speak to us in a new century. was the campaign that The Four Freedoms were written into the Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human "Thanks for showing me the medal and the paintings, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly Grandpa. Maybe I can write something for history class." in 1948. Writing in Foreign Affairs, G. John Ikenberry said "Jack, I had to give away many things that filled our old the FDR speech “is widely seen as a landmark statement of house before I moved to the apartment after your grand- American foreign policy.” Vasily Gatov recently wrote in The mother died. But I was sure to keep my wedding ring, my American Interest that during the the United States’ father's watch, and my brother Jack's medals. “‘personality’ was based around the concept of freedom,” and the Four Freedoms were the “roots of this freedom narrative.” "Seeing you on the diamond today, I'm giving these medals to you. I can already tell you will become a fine man, like my brother was. These are the most precious things I own, Looking back, looking ahead and I want you to have and keep them. For decades critics have judged Rockwell as a mere “illustrator” "The medals are to remember your Uncle Jack, a Marine rather than an artist. As times, tastes, and moods changed, who gave his life. And now the Four Freedoms are for you many dismissed him and his portrayals of America in the to preserve for the next generation." ■ decades from the 1920s to the 1950s as sentimental, smug, and sterile. Many of his images have become overfamiliar. As the American population has become more diverse, we now notice that the subjects in Rockwell’s works before the ABOUT THE AUTHOR Donald Bishop is the Donald L. Bren Chair of Strategic 1960s were almost all white. Communications at Marine Corps University, one of The attractiveness and accessibility of the Rockwell paint- the chairs funded by the Foundation. He served in ings have, moreover, outshined the other creative work – the the Air Force in Vietnam, but his career — 31 years — sculptures, music, and paintings by other gifted artists – that was in the U.S. Foreign Service, working as a Public also helped give the Four Freedoms such a public resonance. Diplomacy officer at embassies and consulates A re-evaluation is, however, underway, finding many clas- overseas. In 2007, the State Department detailed sical elements in the composition of his paintings and lauding him to as the Foreign Policy Advisor to Commandant James Conway. At MCU, his elective and lectures Rockwell’s ability to portray the American spirit. One Rockwell focus on informational power, information conflict, disinformation, painting, “” sold at auction in 2013 for $46 and influence. million. At the time the sale set a record for a single American

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