The postcard features a painting "Freedom of Speech", one of the four scenes of American daily life by illustrator Norman Rockwell, inspired by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt's State of the Union address on January 6, 1941. President Roosevelt declared four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy: Freedom of speech; Freedom of worship; Freedom from want; Freedom from fear.
On the twelfth anniversary of the September 11 attacks and just after the nation stepped back from an imminent military conflict with Syria, we can appreciate more the meanings of the freedoms and understand how to protect them.
"In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression - everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way - everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want - which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants - everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear -which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor - anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb."
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