State of the Union AddressesRoosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
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State of the Union Addresses
Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano)
Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my
Budget Message I shall recommend that a greater portion of this great
defense program be paid for from taxation than we are paying today. No
person should try, or be allowed, to get rich out of this program; and the
principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be
constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.
If the Congress maintains these principles, the voters, putting patriotism
ahead of pocketbooks, will give you their applause.
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.
To that new order we oppose the greater conception--the moral order. A good
society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions
alike without fear.
Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in
change--in a perpetual peaceful revolution--a revolution which goes on
steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions--without the
concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we
seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly,
civilized society.
This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its
millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance
of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support
goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength
is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save
victory.
***
State of the Union Address
Franklin D. Roosevelt
January 6, 1942
In fulfilling my duty to report upon the State of the Union, I am proud to
say to you that the spirit of the American people was never higher than it
is today--the Union was never more closely knit together--this country was
never more deeply determined to face the solemn tasks before it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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