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 conditionswithout the concentration camp or the quicklime 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 or keep them. Our strength is in our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory.-Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Message to the Congress, January 6, 1941. Our Inalienable Rights The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.-Abraham Lincoln (1861).1 The duty of the State is to secure the happiness of the citizens. This end can be attained only by allowing the just liberty whereby each may work for his own interest and well-being providing he does not injure the well-being of his fellow citizens.-Paul Heinrich von Holbach (1783). All we have of freedom, all we use or know This our Fathers bought for us long and long ago. -Rudyard Kipling (1899). Every age and generation must be free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies . . . Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions require. It is the living, and not the dead, that are to be accommodated.— Thomas Paine (1800). The freedom and happiness of man are the sole objects of all legitimate government.-Thomas Jefferson (1810). I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. A government had better go to the very extreme of toleration than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with or jeopardize in any degree the rights of the people.-Abraham Lincoln (1863). Natural Right is common to all nations because it rests upon the instinct of nature, not upon ordinance, as the union of male and female; the succession and education of children; the common possession of all things and the equal liberty of all men; the acquisition of whatever is taken in the sky, on land or sea; the restitution of everything given in trust or of money committed to charge; the repulsion of force by force. For these and similar things were never held to be unjust, but to be natural and equal.-Henry Gratian (1150). There should be only one rule of justice for rich and poor, for the favorite at court and the countryman at the plow .. When men enter into society it is by voluntary consent, and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, 1 The dates given indicate the time at which the passages were expressed. In a few instances, however, exact dates are not available, or the person quoted is reported to have written or spoken the same words at several periods of his life. The span of life of each person quoted is given under the heading, Those Who Lifted Their Voices, page 55. they have a right to leave the society they belong to and enter into another.Samuel Adams (1765). All men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community! When any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such a manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.-George Mason (1775) It is the right of our people to organize to oppose any law and any part of the Constitution with which they are not in sympathy-Alfred E. Smith (1928). The people have a right to petition, but not to use that right to cover calumniating insinuations.-Thomas Jefferson (1808). A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse or rest on inferences.-Thomas Jefferson (1787). The community hath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish government, in such manner as shall be by that community judged most conducive to the public weal.-Pennsylvania Declaration of Rights (1874). A man only moderately versed in statesmanship, and with only a small degree of sportsmanship, is bound to admit that in a free republic, in a government such as ours, it is the undoubted right of the people to change their servants, and to remove one and displace him with another at any time they choose, for a good reason, for a bad reason, for no reason at all. It is the duty of the public servants not grumpily and sourly to accept the verdict of the majority but joyously to accept the verdict of the majority if we are to have a free people.-Henry F. Ashurst (1940). And this is Liberty-that one grow after the law of his own life, hindering not another; and this is Opportunity; and the fruit thereof is Variation; and from the glad growing and the fruit-feasting comes Sympathy, which is appreciative and helpful goodfellowship.-John W. Lloyd (1900). Liberty Few nations have attained the blessings of liberty, because few have had energy, courage, and virtue to deserve them.-Charles Joseph Bonaparte (1920). 'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower -William Cowper (1783). Liberty, such as deserves the name, is an honest, equitable, diffusive, and impartial principle. It is a great and enlarged virtue, and not a sordid, selfish, and illiberal vice. It is the portion of the mass of the citizens, and not the |