This post finishes the rough draft of the Introductory Chapter of my current non-fiction WiP, Do Better (fka Baby Acres): Making Society Safer Less in 60 Years. The overall goal has been to introduce one possible roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us, in the hope that All HumanKind will eventually have each person’s basic needs met. This book lays out an idea, and a potential path for getting us there.
Introduction part III: The Four Fundamental Freedoms and “perpetual peaceful
revolution”
The “four essential human freedoms” that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt listed in his
famous inaugural (?) speech of 1941 are, as the president himself pointed out, a tangible distillation of those Human Rights as a list of freedoms that each both facilitate and require the equitable implementation of the three types of justice mentioned earlier. President Roosevelt put it thusly:
“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.
”
The president went on to say that “we have been engaged in change — in a perpetual peaceful revolution — a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions … The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.”
That “Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.“
These words touched off The ( https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2020/08/world-war-ii-the-double-v-campaign/, accessed 2 April, 2021, 15:35 PST …) Double V Campaign of the modern civil rights era.
While these rights have yet to be fully realized for all Americans, much less all human beings
everywhere, they are, as Roosevelt stated, the start of what any just society must aspire to
guarantee to all of it’s citizens.
That peaceful revolution of which President Roosevelt spoke must make needed changes to the entire set of institutions with which we govern our society so that, as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out, “the edifice which produces beggars” is changed into one that produces truly equitable opportunities for all human beings around the world. Clearly, the rebuilding of such a massive edifice as our interconnected web of societal infrastructures, social, economic, physical, and governance-related, requires both time and fore-thought. The task of wrapping up even the most basic of essential human rights into a system capable of guaranteeing that each and every citizen is treated equitably in the light of each of the major types of justice is “a vast project.” Yet is is a project that must be taken on if the promise of those four essential freedoms that President Roosevelt spoke of and Dr. King dreamt of seeing are to be made a reality. It is a project which our founding documents, from the United States Declaration of Independence, to the Preamble to the US Constitution enshrine in law, that “we the people” “are created equal.”
It is equally clear that this is a project which cannot hope to be successful alone, even if
undertaken by an entire generation. The goal of building a just society must be one which is
undertaken and committed to by an alliance spanning multiple generations. From the Framers of the US Constitution, to President Roosevelt, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Noam Chomsky and John Rawls, together with Naomi Klein, members of Black Lives Matter, to the students from the many schools who have experienced mass shooting traumas, generation upon generation has added its voice to the calls for justice, freedom, and human rights for all citizens.
No one community is capable of welding together a system that will be just for all members of society, and no one generation is capable of finishing such a gargantuan task. It is thus incumbent upon all members of society to play a part in contributing to the vision of a just society, whether by putting forth an alternative potential vision of how such a society could function, or by sketching out what some piece of such a society could look like. Changing our societal edifice into one which not only no longer produces suffering, but even encourages the best in all of us, is not a task that even one generation could accomplish alone. We are all indeed in this together, and must do the work, all together. It can be done, if we will it.
“Yes, we can.”
That is the rough draft of the third and final part of my introductory chapter.
Last week was the fourth installment of this series…
Action Items:
1.) Search for two different sources related to The Double V.
2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.
3.) Share your thoughts on how discrimination could affect a society that might be built, in 50-100 years.
4.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.
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