When Franklin Roosevelt addressed the Congress on January 6, 1941, he had, only a couple of months before, been elected to an unprecedented third term as President. Since then, Hungary and Romania had joined the Axis, the Italians had shown vulnerability on water and in North Africa. Holland, Belgium, Norway, and France were under the Nazis, and London was being bombed to rubble. The United States was not sending troops to the war in Europe, Africa and Asia, and there was even some doubt if we had a horse in that proverbial. There wasn’t much doubt which side Our President was on, sure, but was the country behind him?
So. The genius of mass communication, who had revived the State of the Union address, and used it to talk, not just to the Congress but to the country, “one hundred and thirty Americans in forty-eight states,” and convince them that the world’s fight was their fight. “In times like these it is immature—and incidentally, untrue—for anybody to brag that an unprepared America, single-handed, and with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off the whole world.” President Roosevelt first makes the case that America must, in its own defense, join the defense of others (of Britain, anyway). But he doesn’t stop there. He recognizes that the defense of the United States cannot be like the defense of Weimar Germany, a defense of the indefensible.
As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone. Those who man our defenses, and those behind them who build our defenses, must have the stamina and the courage which come from unshakable belief in the manner of life which they are defending. The mighty action that we are calling for cannot be based on a disregard of all things worth fighting for.The President recognized that the American ideal was not yet reached. He phrases it in static terms, as if the “basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems” can be once accomplished, and emphasizes that the ideals he espouses are not those of “a distant millenium”. This was clearly a deliberate rhetorical choice, but I’m not sure whether it was a wise one. Yes, he wanted to tell people they were getting their money’s worth from the sacrifices he was asking them to make, but surely it was clear that the Four Freedoms were not only unachievable in a generation, but were always going to be goals to be approached, rather than achieved. We have, in this country, a history of making meritorious attempts to alleviate want and hardship, followed a generation later by a discovery that the poor are still with us, and a cynical retreat into protecting the property of those who have it. Perhaps the rhetoric of Rabbi Tarfon would simply result in there being no expensive social-justice programs at all, but I can’t help thinking that if we could pass a social justice program admitted to treat but not to cure the problems, we might escape the next generation’s backlash. Anyway. The President does speak of a “perpetual peaceful revolution”, which is wild talk indeed, but does so within a firmly pragmatic frame.
But I am sidetracked (as I usually am) by things primarily of interest to Your Humble Blogger. The big thing about this speech is how shockingly harsh it is. I imagine, Gentle Reader, that you have read the inspiring bits of the speech that are often excerpted out of their context, and have assumed that the speech was all so ambitious. Read, then:
Therefore, the immediate need is a swift and driving increase in our armament production. Leaders of industry and labor have responded to our summons. Goals of speed have been set. In some cases these goals are being reached ahead of time; in some cases we are on schedule; in other cases there are slight but not serious delays; and in some cases—and I am sorry to say very important cases—we are all concerned by the slowness of the accomplishment of our plans. The Army and Navy, however, have made substantial progress during the past year. Actual experience is improving and speeding up our methods of production with every passing day. And today's best is not good enough for tomorrow.The President is putting a brave face on a grim situation, but he is making no bones about the fact that he is putting a brave face on a grim situation. This has two major rhetorical advantages. First, of course, there’s the credibility factor: when a speaker makes a minor admission, he gains the authority of honesty by virtue of that admission, and then when he places those problems in a positive context, he can do so persuasively. This is a trick called paromologia (or concessio), and it’s a very nice trick, as well. Do not underestimate the power of tricks.I am not satisfied with the progress thus far made. The men in charge of the program represent the best in training, in ability, and in patriotism. They are not satisfied with the progress thus far made. None of us will be satisfied until the job is done. No matter whether the original goal was set too high or too low, our objective is quicker and better results. To give you two illustrations:
We are behind schedule in turning out finished airplanes; we are working day and night to solve the innumerable problems and to catch up.
We are ahead of schedule in building warships but we are working to get even further ahead of that schedule.
More important, though, is that the entire speech functions with three interlocking parts. The audience must agree to take actions, in this case the Congress must raise taxes, and also to accept the Lend/Lease program and certain other legislative measures, and the country at large must support them in those measures as well as increase productivity, in large measure by agreements between business and labor. To convince the audience to take actions, the speaker must present two scenarios: what happens if the audience fails to act, and what happens if the audience agrees to act. These three parts are important in any speech: the proposed action, the consequences of inaction, and the consequences of acting. Oh, for logic, it would be nice to have some evidence that the action or inaction would, in fact, have the described consequences, but it isn’t necessary. If a speaker fails to lay out one of these three things, as speakers often do, the speech will—not fail, necessarily, but not fully succeed, either. Often the speaker will imply that one of the consequences will be the status quo; this is not only logically silly (the quo never remains status for long) but unlikely to strike the listener as compelling.
That’s why the speech works. The admissions of grim reality, in addition to catching the attention of the listener and persuading him of the speaker’s honesty, work to underly the fatal consequence of inaction. But that isn’t enough. Action will not only stave off the dire threat, but will achieve something in itself, something better than the status quo, something great. In this case, the tremendous threat is balanced by a tremendous reward, and people remember the Four Freedoms, not (I propose) because they were ever anything that we had a national consensus about, but because they were the balance to the totalitarian threat, the light to the dark.
No, I won’t belabor the point about Our Only President and our missed opportunity. But I’ll say this: we can learn from good rhetoric more than the Greek names for ways to fool people.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.