Four Freedoms

🇫🇮 🇸🇪 It's important to remember that that you do not have the right to infringe on other peoples' human rights when you are exercising your own fundamental human rights. Burning a book, a religious text, may be an act of free speech, but it is also an act of censorship and a violation of the right to religious freedom. Perhaps for some the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is too complex to understand, but everyone should be capable of comprehending President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms.

FDR looked forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first was freedom of speech and expression. The second was freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—the freedom to practice any religion you choose. The third was freedom from want—which means economic freedom—the freedom to pursue your own happiness, to choose your own path, to own property, to start a business, and to accumulate wealth. The fourth was freedom from fear—which means the freedom to live in a world free from violence, terror, repression, transnational repression, war, and aggression.

Americans were asked to go to war to defend these four freedoms. And after the war, the USA created several new international organizations designed to protect these four freedoms. The USA should ask all of our allies to continue to pursue FDR's vision of a world founded upon these four essential human freedoms.

The demonstration in Sweden is disturbing, almost as disturbing as some of the demonstrations we have seen in the USA, but I do not believe it represents the entire Swedish population, only a small, misguided group. The Swedish government does not violate human rights.

However, we are receiving reports that the Turkish government does. Turkey is engaged in transnational repression, gross human rights violations, political oppression, and issuing threats of aggression against other NATO allies. Turkey does not appear to have any respect for the four freedoms. Instead Turkey is using the NATO alliance, essentially the US military power, as leverage to extort concessions from other countries, demanding that they violate these four essential human freedoms. That is not the world order President Franklin D. Roosevelt envisioned. We look forward to both Finland and Sweden joining NATO, even if that means saying farewell to Turkey.

We expect all of our institutions and all members of those institutions to uphold the principles that they were originally founded on. We should all recommit to pursuing President Franklin D. Roosevelt's ideals and vision. If the Turkish government can't even comprehend these fundamental principles, they don't belong in NATO.

Required Reading:
NATO Must Stand Up to Turkey’s Blackmail https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/03/nato-must-stand-up-to-turkeys-blackmail/

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., one of my favorite senators, is taking care of business. https://executivegov.com/2023/02/senators-say-congress-should-hold-f-16-sales-turkey-until-nato-protocols-ratify/