Hillary Clinton’s run for the presidency is being launched at a place she considers significant: the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park in New York.
I’ll bet most Americans don’t even know what President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “four freedoms” are. They are:
Freedom of speech;
Freedom of worship;
Freedom from want;
Freedom from fear.
By positioning herself aside the monument to these four freedoms, Hillary Clinton is telling us what she stands for. It’s not unlike Ronald Reagan launching his candidacy in front of the Statue of Liberty in 1980, or Ted Cruz launching his candidacy for the presidency at the university founded by Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority.
To Hillary Clinton, and those who support her (like those who support Obama), these are the most important things.
But are these things reasonable? Or even possible?
Freedom of speech certainly is. Yet, in contradiction to her love of free speech (and feminism), Hillary Clinton severed as Obama’s Secretary of State. She’s proud of her job in that position, and offers it as one of her credentials for being President. Yet in that job, like Obama, she made daily excuses and suggested peaceful negotiations with nations based on Islamic totalitarianism, such as Iran.
If Hillary Clinton really cared as much about Roosevelt’s “freedom of speech” as she claims, then why doesn’t she oppose Iran and other Islamic movements with the force and fury she generally reserves for conservatives, libertarians and other opponents of her policies?
The same goes for federal control of the Internet, as a government utility. The Internet is the greatest form of free speech ever known to humankind. By what right does the federal government claim control over this resource as a utility subject to regulation in the “public interest,” whatever that is? It’s the same inconsistency as her hero, FDR, in supporting the establishment of the FCC, which holds that all radio (and later television) broadcasts must pursue the “public interest.” No, an outright dictatorship has — fortunately — yet to evolve out of that wrong law. But the legal and administrative stage is set, and now we have done the same with the Internet, thanks to Obama — with whom she presumably agrees.
“Freedom of worship.” That’s certainly a right — so long as one does not rationalize the use of force against another in the name of religion. Militant Muslims rationalizing their “right” to faith and worship as a means for imposing Sharia law, or even murdering innocent people? That’s not freedom of worship, at least not the justified kind. Yet, as Clinton’s record shows, she’s willing to tolerate that in the Middle East, and — as a good progressive — probably to some extent in America. What about when a conservative Christian baker asserts his freedom to worship as entitling him not to make a cake for a gay/lesbian wedding? Will she be as tolerant of religion in that case? Not in a New York minute.
So much for freedom of worship and speech. Clearly, they’re conditional.
Then there’s freedom from want. What is this supposed to mean? Freedom from famine and starvation? If those are your real goals, then free market capitalism, private property and the profit motive are the only plausible solutions. Capitalism (even partial capitalism) has erased famine from civilizations who embrace that social system, most of all America. Yet Clinton, like her former boss, favors policies of “spreading the wealth” and transferring “resources” even more than we already do. Capitalism is the bad guy, to politicians like FDR and Hillary Clinton, yet it’s the only possible way to attain freedom from want.
The idea “freedom from want” basically means you have a moral and political right not to be hungry, or otherwise uncomfortable as the government defines proper comfort. If the government upholds free markets and private property rights, famine will not be an issue. There may be isolated cases where private charity is the only way for someone to survive. Private charity has never been absent in capitalist societies, nor semi-capitalist ones. Nor is it against the law to help anyone you choose, in any way you choose.
The freedom from want idea isn’t intended to encourage or foster charity. It’s intended to establish as a “right” the state of affairs of being comfortable. Originally this meant not being hungry. Now that has extended to education (including college), health insurance (for every conceivable ailment), and as yet untold additional things you have a political right not to have to “want.”
The root issue here is not freedom. It’s entitlement.
Freedom from fear is the same kind of entitlement, only more absurd because it’s applied to emotions. Not only do you have a political right to be free from physical discomfort, you also have a moral (and presumably political) right to be free from the emotion of fear, according to FDR (and now Clinton). How the federal government is to implement “freedom from fear” is yet to be realized or articulated.
Since fear refers to emotion, and emotions refer to the workings of the mind, we can only assume that a “right” to not be afraid can translate to all kinds of anti-freedom and anti-liberty policies — such as the “right” not to be exposed to speech or ideas the government considers “hateful,” or otherwise against its political interests.
The idea that one can or should have a “right” to be free from fear or want explains the development of the entitlement psychology in America, and why it has come to dominate our culture and government. The moment you consider yourself to have a right to one thing that curbs your wants or fears, is the moment the stage is set to have a right to an infinite number of other things to curb your wants or fears. If you’re entitled to feel good and comfortable — well, then you’re entitled.
Who’s to pay for, or provide, these freedoms from want or fear? On the surface, the government. The good graces of the great and compassionate souls like Franklin Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton. But they’re not providing these things. They’re merely the bullies shaking down these “resources” from some to give to others. You might think this is justified; but you should at least acknowledge that this is what’s going on.
As an ironic but entirely consistent aside, ABC News reports that the Federal Aviation Administration declared airspace above the site of Hillary Clinton’s official presidential campaign kickoff in New York City a no-fly zone — which authorizes the use of “deadly force” against a security threat.
“This is highly unusual,” a spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, told ABC News. Such no-fly zones are not normally declared for presidential candidates, and such a move did not occur for Clinton’s activities when she was first lady, ABC reports.
It may be highly unusual. But Hillary is at Four Freedoms Park not just to kick off a campaign for the power she has lusted after all of her adult life. She’s also there to uphold the entitlement mentality. She seeks to be the Queen ruler of the federal entitlement state based on the entitlement idea that you have a right to be free from want, fear or anything else the government decides you deserve not to face.
With all Hillary seeks to do for us (and to some of us), isn’t open airspace the least we can provide her? If we’re entitled to all the things she claims we are, then she’s entitled too.
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