You Gotta Give for What You Take

On this day in 1941 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt named the 4 freedoms: freedom of speech & religion and freedom from want & fear. It was noted by many masochists (but quietly, as is their wont) that FDR did not specifically defend their freedom to want fear. Of course, this denial made them feel quite rosy with pleasure.

Then again, on this day in January 1941 FDR did not include either of these surely important things as freedoms:

• Freedom from getting the crapped bombed out of you in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, let alone the further indignity of having millions of school kids dance impatiently over your watery grave if you were on the U.S.S. Arizona, and let’s not even talk about that Michael Bay monstrosity of a movie.
• Freedom from them naming an instantly outdated urban highway after you, and what’s worse, its pilings will be eaten away by sea termites (that’s the FDR Drive along the East River for you New York City-challenged folks).
  

What's more, in a rare draft document one can see only on the "special" tours of FDR’s estate at Hyde Park (slip Vinnie the tour guide a sawbuck and you’re golden), we can witness that impish presidential humor in full flower with crossed out freedoms like:

• Freedom to slip that fat bastard Winston an exploding cigar.
• Freedom to travel to the future and stop the 22 Amendment--I will never die!
• Freedom to use the NSA, once it’s established, to wiretap people, once everybody has phones.
• Freedom to Heil! Heil! Right in the Fuhrer’s face!