The Historic Importance of January 6th . . . 1941

It seems like the prime-time presenters on MSNBC (Ari Melber, Joy Reid, Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell ) have been reporting on nothing but the historical importance of January 6, 2021 for the past year-and-a-half. Who can blame them? After all, that is a day - which, to borrow a quote from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt - “which shall live in infamy.” The major difference, of course, is that FDR’s December 8, 1941 “live in infamy” address to Congress, concerned Japan’s bombing of the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor; our “day of infamy” is the seditious storming of the U.S Capitol on January 6, 2021. The people of MSNBC have spent the lion’s share of their on-air time investigating and reporting on virtually every aspect of that day when democracy was nearly destroyed. It fascinates me no end that no one has mentioned or figured out what, most eerily, happened on Capitol Hill precisely 80 years before (that’s 29,200 days and 700,800 hours before) on January 6, 1941: FDR’s State of the Union Address, where he set out in bold and eloquent detail that which has ever since been known as “The Four Freedoms.” What makes it all the more eerie - not to mention prescient and breathtaking - is how much FDR’s speech mirrors America and the world 80 years later . . . to the day.

To be certain, there are a handful of speeches which stand out in American political history:

George Washington’s “Farewell Address” in 1796.
Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (“Four score and seven years ago . . . “)
JKF’s Inaugural Address (“Ask not what your country can do for you . . . “)

But topping them all, in my humble opinion, is FDR’s State of the Union address to Congress on January 6, 1941. For his “Four Freedoms” address, while not white-washed with the good news and optimistic phrases of most annual presidential addresses, set a course and a purpose for this nation that has never since been equaled. As America entered the war these "four freedoms" - the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear - symbolized America's war aims and gave hope in the following years to a war-wearied people because they knew they were fighting for freedom. Indeed, it is the only one speech in American history that inspired a multitude of books and films, the establishment of its own park, a series of paintings by a world famous artist, a prestigious international award and a United Nation’s resolution on Human Rights.

At the time of Franklin Roosevelt’s State of the Union address on January 6, 1941, he had just been reelected president for an unprecedented third term. At the time, the world faced unprecedented dangers, instability, and uncertainty. Much of Europe had fallen to the advancing German Army and Great Britain was barely holding its own; London was being strafed from the air by the German Luftwaffe on a nightly basis. A great number of Americans remained committed to isolationism and the belief that the United Sates should continue to stay out of the war, but President Roosevelt understood Britain's need for American support and attempted to convince the American people of the gravity of the situation.

In his State of the Union, FDR articulated a powerful vision for a world in which all people had freedom of speech and of religion, and freedom from want and fear.

The ideas enunciated in Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms were the foundational principles that evolved into the Atlantic Charter declared by Winston Churchill and FDR in August 1941; the United Nations Declaration of January 1, 1942; President Roosevelt’s vision for an international organization that became the United Nations after his death; and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948 through the work of Eleanor Roosevelt.

As tyrannical leaders once again resort to brutal oppression and terrorism to achieve their goals, as democracy and journalism are under attack from extremists and conspiratorialists both in the United States and across the globe, and as surveillance and technology threaten individual liberties and freedom of expression, FDRs bold vision for a world that embraces these four fundamental freedoms is as vital today as it was more than 80 years ago. For those who are interested in reading the speech in its entirety, please check out FDR’s Four Freedoms Speech.

Interestingly, FDR, after consulting with his behind-the-scenes advisors, dictated the speech in a matter of minutes to his secretary Grace Tully. Unlike presidents ever since, FDR rarely used a team of speechwriters. This SOTU came from his heart; it would wind up changing the world.

FDR’s Handwritten Notes for the January 6, 1941 SOTU

In 1941, there were plenty of people who believed that FDR was a “traitor to his class” - an aristocrat who actually cared about the state and fate of the downtrodden; one who believed that democracy was the most superior form of government. There were also those who found him “too much of a Socialist” (FDIC, Social Security and the Tennessee Valley Authority). He surrounded himself with a stellar brain trust (Samuel Rosenman, Benjamin Cohen, Felix Frankfurter and Bernard Baruch, to name but a few) and listened intently to the advise he was given. He also understood that the fate of America and her allies was ultimately up to him, and did whatever he could to motivate a nation to do the right thing. Yes, it is true, his State Department didn’t always do the right thing when it came to the Jews attempting to escape Nazi oppression (which causes many modern-day Jews to throw him on the ash-heap of history); nonetheless, FDR responded to his ilk by telling them that Democracy belonged to everyone . . . not just the WASPS he grew up and was educated amongst.

At the time of the January 6, 1941 State of the Union address, there was both a loud, staunchly vituperative isolationist wing of the Republican Party (“America First,” led nationally by Charles A. Lindbergh) and a fully-armed batch of Nazi sympathizers (The “German American Bund,” led for many years by Fritz Kuhn, the so-called “American Fuhrer.”

Today, more than 80 years after that first, historic January 6th, America is once again beset by isolationists (the MAGA wing of the Republican Party), growing anti-Semitism and conspiracies galore. This time, we are led by a decidedly non-Blue Blood president who like FDR, understands the critical role America can and must play in a world that once again is falling in love with autocracy and fascism. But unlike FDR, who was accused of being an enemy of America’s hereditary aristocracy, Joe Biden is attacked for being the leader of a “woke” nation; the leader of a left-wing socialist/communist conspiracy which attempts to make “sissies” of us all. It is just as moronically idiotic today as it was 80+ years ago.

Way back in 1849, French critic, journalist and novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose “ – the more things change, the more they stay the same… From January 6, 1941 to the same date in 2021, many, many things have changed in and about the United States of America . . . if indeed, not the entire world. But Karr was and always shall be unerringly correct for in modern idiomatic English, “plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose means “What goes around comes around.”

Let us work and teach, give voice and vote that which FDR pledged on the first historic January 6 - the Four Freedoms - will continue to go around and come around. For it is only through maintaining these four indelible freedoms that America can continue being a beacon of bright light for the rest of the world.