The United States of Fear?

Into our third decade of the 21st century, Americans are coming to understand and appreciate Freedom from Fear from a different perspective than when the phrase was introduced by Franklin Roosevelt in his State of the Union address in 1941.  At the time, Europe was engaged in a war that would soon escalate and involve the entire civilized world.

In giving Freedom from Fear an iconic image in 1943, the painter Norman Rockwell shows a couple tucking their children into bed. their faces full of love and care while the father holds a newspaper down at his side with a headline: “Bombings Kill..Horror..”  The world was in turmoil battling the forces of Fascism in the conquests of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Here’s an example of how the non-profit organization, For Freedoms, has updated the images of Freedom from Fear for our age.

In 2020, nearly 80 years later, Americans are experiencing fears about global and domestic terrorists that we’ve been told threaten our very existence. Nearly every week 

there is an “incident” whereby a bomb explodes or a gunman sprays a hail of bullets killing innocents, not to mention the current meltdown over the corona virus.

Feeling more vulnerable as institutions fail to protect us

At the heart of our fears is growing mistrust of our social institutions. Scandals in our churches, schools, federal, state and local government agencies, banks, credit card companies, etc. all serve to undermine our sense of safety within our own communities. All of these scandals suggest a moral disconnect between the values we espouse as a democracy and the reality of how people actually behave. It makes us wonder, “Is everyone trying to game the system for personal gain?”

Big tech abuse of monopoly power 

The always-on media provides a continuous stream of disaster stories and warnings that keep most of us at least a bit on edge…waiting for the other shoe to drop in the next catastrophe. This is particularly true with social media which literally makes money by appealing to the worst instincts among human beings. Author Rana Foroohar explains why big tech has become such a big threat to our democracy. Here’s a long video but just watching the first part gets her point across.

With existential threats to our earth through climate change, and endless proxy wars to fight “terrorism,” Freedom from Fear takes on a much broader meaning yet retains the urgency of the circumstances faced by the greatest generation when Roosevelt first used the phrase. Stay tuned for ways we can act to preserve our freedom from fear.