The following is an excerpt from The Fight for the Four Freedoms:


The following is an excerpt from The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great by Harvey J. Kaye.

We need to remember. We need to remember what conservatives have never wanted us to remember and what liberals have all too often forgotten.


Now, after more than 30 years of subordinating the public good to corporate priorities and private greed, of subjecting ourselves to widening inequality and intensifying insecurities and of denying our own democratic impulses and yearnings, we need to remember.

We need to remember who we are.

We need to remember that we are the children and grandchildren of the men and women who rescued the United States from economic destruction in the Great Depression and defended it against fascism and imperialism in World War II.

We need to remember that we are the children and grandchildren of the men and women who not only saved the nation from economic ruin and political oblivion, but also turned it into the strongest and most prosperous country on earth.

And most of all we need to remember that we are the children and grandchildren of the men and women who accomplished all of that – in the face of powerful conservative, reactionary and corporate opposition and despite their own faults and failings – by making America freer, more equal and more democratic than ever before.

Now, when all that they fought for is under siege and we too find ourselves confronting crises and forces that threaten the nation and all that it stands for, we need to remember that we are the children and grandchildren of the most progressive generation in American history. We are the children of the men and women who articulated, fought for and endowed us with the promise of the Four Freedoms.

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