On this day in 1941, US president Franklin D Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union Address, articulating four fundamental and universal guarantees vouch-saved for all of humanity. Breaking with the long-standing tradition of non-interventionism with foreign wars and nearly a year before the attack of Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, FDR pressed for a greater role in aiding allied forces already under siege through the lens of national security and self-interest.
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Enumerating the benefits of the democratic system, the speech highlights the importance of economic security in the face of precarity as a counter-balance to the regression towards nationalism and belligerence.