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On Monday the 6th of January, 84 years ago, in 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, facing the aggressions of an expanding fascist tyranny, proclaimed four freedoms for all people in the world.

Today I rewrite his articulation of those four freedoms for every creature in the world:

We seek to make our world happy and secure. Therefore we look forward to a world founded upon four essential freedoms for all creatures.

The first is freedom of speech and expression–everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every creature to worship God and connect with the universe in its own way–everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want–which, translated into world terms, means economic and ecological understandings, which will secure to every human nation and to every flock, herd and other grouping of living creatures, a healthy, peaceful life for its individuals – everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear–which, translated into world terms, might mean a world-wide reduction of armaments and all types of weapons of destruction of habitat 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 neighboring nation or other species–anywhere in the world.

The reality is that this might be a vision of a distant millennium. But it is a dream of a kind of world probably not attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis sort of order of tyranny which dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb, the crash of a clearfelled forest or any other wanton selfish destruction of habitat.

Geoff Fox, January 6, 2025, Melbourne, Australia