Lawyers Road Review

“I say this to Congress, we have to stand up to Putin. Send me a bipartisan national security bill. History is watching. If the United States walks away, it will put Ukraine at risk. Europe will be at risk. The free world will be at risk…My message to President Putin: We will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down. And in the literal sense, history is watching.” President Biden, State of the Union Address, March 7 2024.

Reading Manchester’s The Last Lion, a biography of Winston Churchill this week I stumbled across cuts from the State of the Union address given by President Roosevelt on January 6th 1941, serendipitous that this same week we heard from his distant successor in the same venue for the same purpose. Most congruent however was the topic of aid for democracy.

It has become known as the Four Freedom’s Speech. The President tells America all we stand for freedom of speech, of faith, freedom from want, meaning hunger, and freedom from fear, and by that he means fear of aggression from foreign foes.

This speech ushered in the Lend Lease program which provided the United Kingdom essential defense goods and weaponry to stem the tide of regimes which sought to erase these freedoms wherever they advanced.

At the time our mother country had survived the Battle of Britain alone and was suffering through the Blitz, the German Air Force ( Luftwaffe) effort to bomb them into submission.

Bucolic moment from the Battle of Britain

More from the 1941 State of the Union speech:

Our national policy is this:
First, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are
committed to all-inclusive national defense.

Second, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are
committed to full support of all those resolute peoples, everywhere, who are resisting aggression and are
thereby keeping war away from our Hemisphere. By this support, we express our determination that the
democratic cause shall prevail; and we strengthen the defense and the security of our own nation.

(President Roosevelt’s immediate successor would call this the “Truman Doctrine.”)

Third, by an impressive expression of the public will and without regard to partisanship, we are
committed to the proposition that principles of morality and considerations for our own security will
never permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers. We know that
enduring peace cannot be bought at the cost of other people’s freedom.

This last reference certainly was directed at the shameful conduct where Europe handed over Czechoslovakia to Herr Hitler believing this would satisfy his aggressive appetite. The British at this point had come to understand the folly of that policy.

It appears we are today where we were 83 years ago; without the foresight generally to address aggression head on and merely wishing it to be different. No lesson learned.

Other elements of the 1941 State of the Union speech echos our situation today, whether it be other flash points in the South China Sea, the Red Sea, or the Middle East:

Every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being directly assailed in every
part of the world—assailed either by arms, or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda by those who
seek to destroy unity and promote discord in nations that are still at peace.

Lets not forget, as FDR would remind us here, that the election of 2016 was blighted by disinformation sown by Russia in our social media. This is not new, they have been carrying out what are called “active measures” on our shores and those of our allies for generations. They are very, very good at adding just enough truth to mask the lies within.

I have not listened to the entire recording of the 1941 State of the Union speech. I seriously doubt any member of the House of Representatives believed it would somehow be beneficial to interrupt the President in 1941, no more than it occurred to any member of the public to storm the proceedings there as occurred 80 years to the day later.

Ultimately what FDR said that day remains valid:

Let us say to the democracies: “We Americans are vitally concerned in your defense of freedom. We
are putting forth our energies, our resources and our organizing powers to give you the strength to regain
and maintain a free world. We shall send you, in ever-increasing numbers, ships, planes, tanks, guns. This
is our purpose and our pledge.”

By now we can see in 1940 and 1941 we sent too little initially, as ultimately ended by sending all we had. After a long fight though Northern Africa, to Sicily then landing on the Italian mainland Rome fell to our forces the same day as D-Day, June 6, 1941.

What if we had stepped in sooner? What if it were us supporting the French and British in their bid to aid Czechoslovakia in 1938 or Poland in 1939 or the Danes, Norwegians and French in 1940?

We have the luxury now of writing our own counterfactual before it is too late. We the People, need to aid the other peoples lest we see another massive bloodletting to preserve democracy, if we can, if it is not too late this time.