In 1943, in the Chicago Tribune, I recommended adding freedom of opportunity to President Franklin Roosevelt's four-freedoms speech to Congress. At the time I was on my way to a new assignment in Washington, D.C., after serving a year and a half in the South Pacific war zone.
I renewed my recommendation -- to add freedom of opportunity to the freedoms of speech, of religion, from want, and from fear --with President George W. Bush's administration through Tony Snow and, later, Dana Perino. Snow responded with a nice note, thanking me and praising my remarks of the way he handled a
sometimes-hostile press conference as the president's press secretary. He added a special handwritten note: "And thanks for mentioning the Fifth Freedom. You're absolutely right." I received no response from Perino, who left shortly afterward to join the Fox News crew in an admirable, if painfully short, stint with the news service I've watched for almost all its 15 years of providing fair-and-balanced news coverage, much appreciated by this old journalist.
I revive all this again because I feel strongly about freedom of opportunity. It reflects the America we knew and liked until various efforts by President Obama for a weaker, more-socialized society in our great and exceptional nation. We are now more laden with a stifling, regulatory administration.
There's no question in my mind -- and, I figure, in the minds of many millions of others -- that we need a change in government to more-traditional freedoms for citizens. That, of course, includes freedom of opportunity.
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I believe this rather simple, but understandable, proclamation made by any or all of those seeking the presidency of our nation would restore faith and respect for whoever is the successful candidate to lead our exceptional nation in what has become a troubled world.
Art Barschdorf
Hermantown
