Thoughtful, Timely Brilliance of Our Nation’s President

Following is the transcript of the timely speech by the President of the United States. As an advisor, facilitator and coach to executive leaders for 50-years, I offer this as an illustration of outstanding leadership communication. The President gave this speech upon deep thought and contemplation — and after crafting seven drafts.

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I have called for personal sacrifice. And I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call.

A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes. In my Budget Message I will recommend that a greater portion of this great defense program be paid for from taxation than we are paying for today. No person should try, or be allowed, to get rich out of the program; and the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.

If the Congress maintains these principles, the voters, putting patriotism ahead of pocketbooks, will give you their applause.

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

• 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.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception–the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change–in a perpetual peaceful revolution–a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions–without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.

To that high concept there can be no end save victory.

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By President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1941 State of the Union Address | “The Four Freedoms Speech” | 6 January 1941 | On contemplating America’s entry into the world war that was underway. On this occasion that called for real leadership, note the lack of denial of facts, or self-referencing, or self-congratulations, or exaggeration of achievements, or vapid thought, or sociopathic patterns of concern … or persistent incompetence as President of the United States in the maturing moments of a lethal world crisis.

Envision better. Do better. Lead truly. There is no time for less.