Can the Four Freedoms co-exist with Human Nature?

Famously, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (and his speechwriters) set out a powerful agenda for civilized and democratic nations in his State of the Union Address on January 6, 1941.  This was nearly a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  He had in mind the American notions of both Democratic government and material progress, as opposed to the nationalist and militarist notions of the intolerant regimes popular in Germany, Italy and Japan.  His speech outlined Four Freedoms, a comprehensive outline not only of what people need and wish for, but also of what just governments would be concerned with.  

To wit, that section of his speech:  

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

(i)  The first is freedom of speech, and expression—everywhere in the world.

(ii)  The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.

(iii)  The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.

(iv)  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.

His words sound strangely optimistic in this part of the 21st century.  The people of our time have universally decided that they prefer war and enmity in place of peace and freedom.  Certainly, so long as the common mixture of grudges, gossip, resentment, and bitterness guide  modern electorates, barbarism will be the modern way of life.    

Nonetheless, while these points should obviously be the focus of political activity in the United States and, indeed, in all civilized nations, they are universally ignored and despised in favor of acquisition and revenge.  Everywhere, throughout the world, they are ignored in favor of egotism and identities based on violence.  

TRUMPIAN PERFIDY

Well said by Francis Fukuyama:

"What Trump has said over the past few days about Ukraine and Russia defies belief. He has accused Ukraine of having started the war by not preemptively surrendering to Russian territorial demands; he has said that Ukraine is not a democracy; and he has said that Ukrainians were wrong to resist Russian aggression. 

"These ideas are likely not ones he thought up himself, but come straight from the mouth of Vladimir Putin, a man Trump has shown great admiration for. Mee/ting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, the United States started a direct negotiation with Moscow that excludes both Ukraine and the Europeans, and has surrendered in advance two critical bargaining chips: acceptance of Russian territorial gains to date, and a commitment not to let Ukraine enter NATO. In return, Putin has not made a single concession."

Trump, still a villain and an opportunist to the utmost, has made American concessions that were not ours to make.  He has, in the manner of Munich, 1939, betrayed a vulnerable people to a dictator's ambition.  The differences are that while a desperate Chamberlain was fooled by Hitler's lies, here Trump is the liar, blaming the victims and Zelensky for Russia's quite naked aggession, while knowingly playing footsy with the KGB criminal-in-chief, Putin.