Every once in a while, some historian will beclown themselves trying to resurrect the four freedoms as being a worthwhile policy aim of the government that represents obvious rights that belong to all people in the United States (and elsewhere), and today noted (but often disappointing) Reconstruction historian Eric Foner joined that list in terms of my own reading with his claim, mentioned towards the beginning of the book and then repeated at length later on in the book when reflecting on freedom during the Second World War in the United States, that America fought for the Four Freedoms during World War II. My point today in this historical essay is to address the veracity of that claim.

Before doing so, I wish to lay down some context that will help us to address the question and what it means. There is often a wide gulf between the causes and ideals for which a nation’s government claims to fight, as represented in its position papers and speeches and other written material, and the reasons for which ordinary people on the ground fight. If we are taking America as being represented by its government during World War II, we will get a complicated and nuanced picture that leads in one direction. If we look at America as being represented by its fighting men, we will see that there are different reasons for which Americans themselves volunteered to fight, quite distinct from the political machinations going on within the American government. If we want to look at what America fought for, a great deal depends on who we view as truly representing America–its political leaders or the varied reasons of those who actually did the fighting.

A large portion of how we view what America fought for during World War II reflects on our beliefs about the worth of the war aims that are set by any government during war. This is a subject both of surprising relevance as well as considerable disagreement. On the one hand, we have a wide gulf in the United States between the often unrealistic and utopian war aims of Progressive war presidents like Wilson and FDR to make the world safe for democracy or establish a just world order of free nations that represent some sort of cohesive national identity and the more prosaic reasons as to why Americans themselves sign up for wars. If we give too much credence to the utopian ideals of Progressive presidents, wars are inevitably disappointments because the utopian ideals of such leaders can never be achieved in reality. This is certainly true for the four freedoms, however they are defined.

It is an even more thorny issue when one contends with the way that nations and peoples are saddled with the wicked war aims of wicked leaders. When we are dealing with the war aims of the Confederacy or of Nazi Germany, historians often seek to fasten upon their whole nations and cultures and peoples the guilt of the war aims of their leaders. This is often a highly unjust exercise. Without thinking very highly of the war aims of either the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War or that of Nazi Germany, one can easily recognize that individual soldiers often fought for very different reasons than the professed war aims of the leaders of their governments, and it would be unjust for us not to recognize that good or at least ordinary people may fight for some pretty awful government leaders, and also recognize that governments are frequently divided in their war aims, and that different sectors of a government or ruling coalition may have very different goals in mind from wars and different reasons why they accept (however cheerfully) their share of the burden of war. By collapsing the entire nation into the one person who serves as the leader of the nation in our eyes, we deny all of the complexity of why it is that nations and their peoples fight and often either give those people either wholly unrealistic and utopian ideals or horrible and abominable war aims that seek to demonize peoples for the sins of their leaders. Neither of these outcomes is truly just or fair, or really accurate, or even useful from a historical perspective. We can and should do better.

When it comes to why it is that the common soldier fought in World War II, there is a lot of variety as to why soldiers fought, as they expressed themselves. Even when we take into consideration a variety of personal and idiosyncratic reasons, we can figure at least a few reasons that hold true over wide sections of the general populace. The immense popularity of entering World War II, and a great deal of the glue that held the nation together in support of the war, was due to the fact that America had been surprise attacked at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese and then, a few days later, had Hitler declare war on the United States without being under any obligation to do so. This was likely enough for many people to cheerfully submit to whatever cost in blood and treasure it book to counter such willful and foolish foreign aggression–about which we have more to say shortly. Large segments of the population that were made up of certain political and ethnic groups had their own additional reasons to fight. Some leftists saw the desirability of a supposed antifascist front allied with the Soviet Union. Many ethnic minorities saw World War II as a means of showing their loyalty and devotion to the United States and their desire to be seen as full citizens. Many black American soldiers had a specific double-V in mind for victory abroad and victory at home in the overturning of what they (not unreasonably) considered to be an immensely unjust social order after having proven their prowess and dedication to America’s war aims. Some people, like conscientious objectors, did not fight at all, but served at home in work camps often organized like either training camps or prisons, depending on the perspective of the viewer.

Yet these understandable reasons for fighting (or not fighting) were not represented in the war aims promoted by FDR which Foner (and some other historians) view as being the definitive reasons why America was in the war. We can rest assured, because we know the justification of war that was given by FDR at the time of Pearl Harbor, that neither FDR nor the United States Senate, which alone has the authority to declare war at all–a power that has not been properly exercised since World War II, it must be admitted–had the Four Freedoms in mind when declaring war on Japan for their attack on us. Neither were such freedoms in mind when we started fighting Germany after their declaration of war on us. Yet there is a wide gulf between the impractical utopian war aims of the Four Freedoms and the rather sordid reasons why it is that America was caught off guard and entered war with such popular enthusiasm thanks to some corrupt manipulation on the part of FDR and some massive incompetence among those who served the people within government.

To the point, FDR manipulated American behavior to such an extent that both Japan and Germany were greatly pressured into declaring war on the United States, and in doing so in a way that surprised the United States populace which was not properly informed on how America had already compromised itself by making that war inevitable. With regards to Japan, FDR’s administration engaged in a diplomacy of brinksmanship with Japan that pushed Japan into using a familiar tactic of a surprise attack on a naval base (used twice before in wars against China in 1894 and Russia in 1905) as a means of achieving strategic advantage in a war for territory and resources. While it was a surprise to the general public that Japan responded to the threat of its war effort being totally starved of resources, and while America was unprepared, at least for the first six months of the war, to fight against a prepared and seasoned Japan for Pacific territory, FDR’s administration was aware that they had boxed Japan in to such an extent that they would have to attack the United States in some fashion. Similarly, America’s open partnership with Great Britain in the Battle of the Atlantic with regards to convoys, similar to Wilson’s similar compromising behavior in World War I, made it inevitable that Germany would have to attack American shipping in order to attempt to starve Britain into surrender, thus bringing the United States into war on the Atlantic front as well. Again, while the ordinary American was unaware of these shenanigans, FDR was fully aware of what he was doing.

Let us now come, finally, the contents of the Four Freedoms. Are they something that people could reasonably be said to fight for? The four freedoms are as follows: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from fear, and freedom from want. The first two of these freedoms are, comparatively speaking, rather uncontroversial. Yet neither of them were, properly speaking, a proper war aim. Neither Germany nor Japan threatened the religious freedoms of Americans nor their freedom of speech, both of which have always been more endangered by Progressive elites and the need of governments to legitimize their war efforts (and Cold War efforts after World War II) than by foreign enemies. Neither did Germany, Japan, Italy, and their allies fight against freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The horrific slaughter of the Chinese, Jews, and Slavs of Europe was conducted for ethnonational reasons, which are not even considered within the Four Freedoms. Peoples that are being killed by the millions through starvation and deliberate outrages like death camps and incidents like the Rape of Nanking have more pressing worries than the protection of their civil rights, as near and dear as those are to us as Americans.

The other two freedoms are simply unrealistic aims for governments to pursue, and always will be given human limitations of resources and knowledge. Freedom from fear means, in effect, a justification to attack anything that threatens our perceived well-being. This justification for conflict can be exceedingly broad, as those who fear (with good reason) the oppressive power of the state being used against regime opponents within the United States or its constituent states possess, under this goal, the justification to destroy those who cause them to fear the loss of their lives or freedoms. One cannot imagine the Biden regime being entirely content with this sort of freedom being asserted by America’s political opposition. When applied to foreign wars, the search for freedom from fear amounts to a license to kill and destroy any regime which offers any threat to our security, be it through support of terrorists or through espionage efforts or anything else that might threaten the well-being and security of Americans, like trade wars.

Similarly, governments are completely ill-equipped to provide Americans, or any other people for that matter, with freedom from want. Now, it must be conceded that if a nation is ruled by a competent government with non-corrupt civil servants and has a population that is roughly ethnically and culturally homogeneous with a high tolerance for the theft of redistributive taxation that a large degree of freedom from want can be achieved, such conditions are rare in the world and fall as soon as that nation’s general freedom from want becomes an attractive target for the destitute asylum seekers of the world who seek to enjoy the fruits of such well-being without possessing the character or cultural qualities that allow such a state to be enjoyed and maintained. In a large and diverse nation where oppositional attitudes are confused for structural racism, as is the case with the United States, and where there is continual inflation over what freedom of want means–including state of the art healthcare viewed as entitlement, smartphones and other high technology, rapid transit or private vehicles, fresh fruits and vegetables as well as pet food, and the like–it is entirely impossible for freedom from want to be achieved, and wholly not worthwhile to even pursue providing such a high standard of living to those who do not have any interest in working for it themselves, nor any appreciation for what they are given by others. Therefore, it can safely be said that the United States did not fight for the Four Freedoms during World War II, and the third and fourth freedoms in particular are highly dangerous to seek at all, and cannot be maintained in the world that we have for ourselves.