In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.Stubborn tyrants. FDR raised hopes for disarmament in a fully Free World in early 1941. Eleven months later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Peace is no simple task, and it will never have a real chance until the world rids itself of dictators.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.
Frank Warner
This is great, but I guess it's somewhat naive. Society cannot completely disarm. The EU demonstrates that peace can be arranged among former enemies. They can cut back on military spending and rely substantially on the US, but even the nations in the EU know that they can't disarm completely ... probably ever.
Posted by: jj mollo | November 14, 2009 at 03:23 PM