A Fearsome Foursome 0
Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously catalogued “the four freedoms” in a speech in 1941 (follow the link for the complete text):
The first is freedom of speech and expression . . . .
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way . . . .
The third is freedom from want . . . .
The fourth is freedom from fear . . . .
Now comes Jamelle Bouie to catalog Republicans’ “four freedoms,” as betrayed by their deeds.
Here’s Bouie’s list; follow the link for his reasoning:
There are, I think, four freedoms we can glean from the Republican program.There is the freedom to control — to restrict the bodily autonomy of women and repress the existence of anyone who does not conform to traditional gender roles.
There is the freedom to exploit — to allow the owners of business and capital to weaken labor and take advantage of workers as they see fit.
There is the freedom to censor — to suppress ideas that challenge and threaten the ideologies of the ruling class.
And there is the freedom to menace — to carry weapons wherever you please, to brandish them in public, to turn the right of self-defense into a right to threaten other people.
Roosevelt’s four freedoms were the building blocks of a humane society — a social democratic aspiration for egalitarians then and now. These Republican freedoms are also building blocks not of a humane society but of a rigid and hierarchical one in which you can either dominate or be dominated.
H/T to Balloon Juice.
