When President
Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) gave his famed Four Freedoms speech,
America was emerging from the great depression and looking at war in Europe. In
his speech to Congress, he tried to tell Americans why our country needed to
support England in its battle against the Nazis. In his discussion of them, he
spoke about basic human rights. He defined these rights by calling them the
four freedoms. He described them as below, stating that freedom means the supremacy
of rights everywhere:
Freedom of speech and expression, everywhere in the world.
Freedom of every person to worship God in their
own way, everywhere in the world.
Freedom from want, economic
understanding which will secure for every nation a healthy peacetime for its inhabitants
Freedom from fear, worldwide
reduction of armaments …..to the point at which no nation will be in a position
to commit physical aggression against a neighbor.
Decades later, our country faces another crisis. A crisis
where the Rule of Law and the exercise of the freedoms above are in jeopardy.
We now have an administration that wants to create a climate of fear to
reduce the opposition. Rusell Vouight, currently the director of the Office of
Personnel Management, (OPM) and one of the authors of Project 2025, said this
about Federal employees and the reductions currently happening across the
federal workforce: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected.”
Do you wonder why all Republicans seemed to be mute as they
are not critical of the chaos in our midst? They know that Elon Musk along with
right-wing PACs, can, at DJT ‘s bidding, fund an opponent who will go along. I think
they need to get a spine, stand for something, and fight for what is right,
putting the needs of the country above their personal wants. (I know, Mr Smith came to Washington a long
time ago.) One Republican who opposed many nominees, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska,
recently stated she felt threatened and spoke of the climate of fear now
prevalent in Congress. She felt that Senators and other Republicans in Congress
could no longer freely speak. Even Senator Joanie Ernst, a seasoned military
veteran, backed down and supported Nominee Pete Hegspeth, even though she knew
he was unqualified after the right-wing PACs made threats to find a primary
opponent should she vote wrongly on any nominee for the cabinet.
The freedom of speech is also stifled when a climate of fear is
created, negating the intent of two freedoms. Vouight is also a Christian
Nationalist and a proponent of the idea that America was founded as a Christian
nation. That is untrue. Early settlers came to the New World to seek religious
freedom and free expression. Puritans and Pilgrims, Quakers, Huguenots, and
others came to the colonies because they were persecuted and driven from their
homelands in many cases. The Caroll family, a wealthy Catholic supporter of the
English King, was given a royal grant to establish a Catholic colony in
the State of Maryland.
Among the
founding fathers, there was no consensus to define a state religion. Thomas
Jefferson and Ben Franklin famously voiced no support for organized religion.
Jefferson voiced support for nature and Unitarianism, although he supported the
Anglican church in his Virginia community. Franklin was raised as a Puritan but considered himself a deist. The
Declaration of Independence purposedly declared no state religion.
But the Christian
Nationalists (CN) want a state religion; they want to force their values on the
rest of us. They reject the wider freedom of how to worship. They do not
respect common values but instead try to make it more difficult for a woman to
divorce her husband, or obtain an abortion. They are trying to ban
contraception and IVF, all of which allow women to control their bodies. They
are working to overturn same-sex marriage laws, ban books, and remake accurate
portrayals of history. They want to defund public schools or control the agenda
where they can't. They do not support democratic values such as the right to vote
for all or respect the principles of the Rule of Law. Many CN members
participated in the January 6th insurrection.
They
must feel pushback from the rest of us that this is not the American Way.
FDR saw a
nation that was just finally clawing itself back from the Great Depression and
was hurting. This country saw the Dust Bowl decimate farmers in the 30s, bank
failures, foreclosures, poorhouses, and child labor. He set out to try to fix
this and created a social safety net to keep his countrymen from the fear of Want.
Unions were strengthened, child labor was restricted, and the Social
Security program was initiated for vulnerable people and seniors. Some want
these safeguards removed.
Some people now
are calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme ignoring the fact that it goes
mostly to workers who paid into the Treasury for years. Officials are trying to
make it more difficult for beneficiaries to ask questions, or have problems
resolved by closing community offices and demanding in-person meetings at distant
sites. Seniors are facing a climate of fear about the security of their
payments and personal data. Health Centers, Head Start, Meals on Wheels, and
school nutrition programs are being curtailed or cut. But they think you don’t
care about old people or children and won’t protest.
So, what can we
do now? This is not the government we expect, so we must speak out about the
excesses, the disregard of Civil Service regulations, the belittling of federal
workers, the defiance of Congress by usurping its authority and ignoring the firestops
built into appointments such as for the positions of Inspector General. Our workers, who for years were proud of their
federal service, are now wondering if they will have a job in 60 days. This administration
is being surly toward the federal courts and defying or slow-walking court orders.
Such actions, to my knowledge, have never been taken before. But they lie
about federal workers and think no one cares.
Our country is
being cut off from our former world allies, who are now being maligned. Instead,
our ‘dear leader’ wants to play footsie with a murderous dictator, Putin. A man
who has committed war crimes kidnapped children, invaded other countries,
poisoned or otherwise killed opponents, and murdered journalists in the street.
The issue with the USAID program funds p
is stark. The abrupt and cruel denial of food and medicine to populations around
the world will kill thousands, more in the long term if the loss of anti-virals
to prevent HIV/AIDS is discontinued. The likelihood of drug resistance and the
spread of this disease to the rest of the world is now possible through these
poorly considered actions. Children are already dying of malnutrition in famine-stricken
areas of Africa. But they think you won’t care about black and brown people
and won’t protest.
In this country,
actions are being taken in attempts to portray our history as one of macho-men,
white men, who are dominant. The
achievements of women and people of color are erased or minimized as indicated
by all of the senior women in the military who have been fired or demoted and our
civil rights history whitewashed. Folks, in case you haven’t noticed, these
actions are Propaganda 101. We all know better and should say so. We still do
have the freedom of speech, though that is also under fire. The
administration, under the ruse of fighting anti-semitism, started by going
after the speech of green card holders or those with student visas. But don’t
pause, you might be next. As former Congresswoman Liz Cheney recently said
when the president ordered an investigation into his former cybersecurity head
Chris Krebs since he declared the 2020 election was fair.
“In a special
mix of incompetence and evil, Trump has combined his disastrous implementation
of 1930s tariff policies with Stalinesque targeting of political adversaries.
The 2020 election wasn’t stolen and speaking the truth is only a crime in
countries ruled by tyrants.”
Cheney said she
regretted voting for the president the first time. I’m sure Senator Ernst
already regrets her vote for Hegspeth. This is what hyperpartisanship from both
sides created. While Republicans Cheney and Kinzinger served on the House committee
investigating January 6th they subsequently lost their seats. I was
pleased that the House ousted George Santos and investigated Matt Gaetz in a
bipartisan way, I just wish there was more cooperation between parties. After
all, we have to live together. But as long as people have more interest in
promoting division than unity, I guess this will be a problem.
There is so
much more going on as this administration is bombarding everyone with so many
actions, orders, and traumas, judges are deciding against so many that it is
confusing, The issue with the immigrants and students being thrown into jails
or sent to another country is that it ignores due process, as even visa holders
and undocumented immigrants have some rights. So they think you won’t care about
immigrants and foreigners and won’t protest.
With the courts
striking back and millions of people in the streets, it is possible we are
making a difference. These actions, along with the tariff snafu have worked to
reduce the presidents’ approval numbers to high 30s or low 40s, the worst first-hundred-day
drop ever.
The Pew
Research Center lists overall the president's approval as 40%, but 39% when
tariffs are queried. The question of what respondents liked least was how the
president is governing. So what’s next? I guess we wait, but I don’t expect
rapid fixes to this chaos. But we must keep our voices out there because we are
starting to see some rollback. (They backed down on closing all SS offices,
modified some tariffs, put Jackie Robinson back on the website, and Harriet
Tubman in the museum.) Keep up the pressure!
Temporary
restraining orders are being formalized, and despite delays, courts are
speaking back. Even the Supreme Court recently made an emergency midnight order
to stop a deportation. So maybe, just maybe, we slowed this down and autocracy
is not on our doorstep yet, but it is around the corner and we must remain
vigilant. Keep those calls and letters to Congress up, keep making those signs
that speak to the issues, and keep marching, calling friends, and making noise,
We will take our country back!
Til next time-peace!
Addendum…personal note..I started developing this line of
thought a couple of weeks ago and was quite surprised to see, that in his final
message to the world, Pope Francis said the following:
There can
be no peace without freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of
expression, and respect for the views of others.
Amen
