When President Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union address 74 years ago this past month it contained a message that has remained constant through the decades. It is better known as the Four Freedoms speech. In it he proposed four things that, in his words, “people everywhere in the world” ought to enjoy: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The destruction of those ideals soon swept through Eastern Europe and the Far East. Eleven months after his 1941 speech we would be locked in a bloody embrace to defend those freedoms.
World War II had massive, easily identifiable enemies and the country came together in a concerted effort to defeat them. As costly as it was to the United States, the countries where the war was actually waged paid a price we can scarcely imagine.
In the wars since then, things have changed. In Korea there was a shadowy enemy identified as communists. In Vietnam it was even less clear against whom we were fighting and we became acquainted with guerilla warfare. It is much more difficult to conduct an army against such a foe. Little did we realize when we finally gave up Saigon that wars would be changing so radically. The conflicts with Iraq would be the last where conventional strategy and tactics would be in play.
Now we are caught in a struggle against terrorism carried out by many different factions of radical Islam. No one can clearly describe how they relate to one another, let alone to us.
Hiding under the banner of a radical religion that few Muslims support they have left us in a quandary of how to confront them. We don’t even know how large are their forces or where they are concentrated. Two things are obvious: they cannot be ignored and their major weapon is fear.
While they may be waging jihad in the name of Islamic domination, one suspects that their true objective is control of the people they have terrorized. The world as a whole is allied against them yet they continue to hold on to the gains they have made.
They have a soft underbelly that is seldom mentioned: terrorists fear freedom. When the people whom they terrorize realize the four freedoms are the cornerstone of civilization Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Boka Haram, and the despots of the Middle East will be overthrown from within by the very people they have subjugated. We cannot bomb an idea out of existence as you can a city – but freedom can destroy it.
The terrorist should live in fear of freedom, not from the outside, but from the people they control. FDR’s four points will eventually be the downfall of the ISIS and similar groups who are fighting, not for principles or religious beliefs, but to hold on to their power.
Some years ago I was told of a graphic example of how his works. A group of Bosnian refugees came to Harrisonburg where they had been sponsored by a local church. When they arrived by bus from Dulles they immediately made an unexpected request: Take us to the police station.
It took a few minutes to sort out what they wanted. In their previous homeland, they had to have papers to move about the city. They assumed that was the same in Shenandoah Valley. When told they were free and there would never be a need to go to the police to get permission for normal living, they were speechless. Quickly, they understood they were truly free and despite the adjustments they had to make to our language and customs, none wanted to return to the repressive environment of their native land.
That kind of freedom cannot be suppressed; those truths are all powerful. History is littered with the debris of despots who failed to understand that. It may take decades, but freedom will win. The terrorists should live in fear of freedom!
Hayden Hollingsworth
