Actually, I thought that was my primary mission for my family. I would say the primary mission of all human societies would be to facillitate the ability of indiviudals to do this on his own. It’s called empowerment.

“They thought they were picking a liberal leader who would fix whatever needed fixing.”

Naivety, stupidity, apathy, dishonesty. I’ll pick the first one since it is the only one which is a partially positive trait.

“incompetent revolutionary”

That actually sounds like a good thing to me.

“some of his support was due to the perception that certain standards of behavior in a leader can be taken for granted, so why not vote for the more dramatic candidate”

Hmm. I wonder how many other great leaders (Alexander, Hitler) benefited from this.

Excellent point regarding assumiing certain standards of behavior. I’m sure that’s why my family voted for Obama. They did not think they were picking an incompetent revolutionary. They thought they were picking a liberal leader who would fix whatever needed fixing.

If things turn south, they will never understand why because they don’t have enough background to understand Obama’s incompetence. They’ll just blame “politicians.”

Nonetheless, providing practical, not perfect, but practical solutions to the third and fourth “freedoms” is the primary mission of all human societies.

So it’s somewhat understandable that FDR might construe those responsibilities as freedoms.

However, without those “freedoms” America has paradoxically managed to become the most successful society in history in satisfying those “freedoms.”

I tend to think of it like the part of the first line of the Declaration of Independence: “All men are entitled to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

We have rights to life and liberty, but not to happiness itself. We only have the right to pursue happinesss and perhaps achieve it.

I think you forgot:

Freedom from reality. This is more fundamental than your last two Freedoms but includes both of them.

FDR was just an earlier version of today’s liberal fascists. In those days you actually had to state some real freedoms to smuggle in the false ones.

The Four Freedoms:
Freedom of speech and expression
Freedom of religion
Freedom from want
Freedom from fear

The first two are part of the Constitution, but the last two aren’t, by any definition. They are a pipe dream at best, and outright fraud at worst. How could a government possibly ensure those “rights”? By having a social worker and a policeman sitting by your side 24/7?

Over the last 4.6 billion years, which of Earth’s creatures has ever had a “right” to “freedom from want” or “freedom from fear”?

To play pyschologist here a bit, sociopaths and psychopaths — if that is what Obama is or is close to what he is — are often extraordinarily charming individuals. They can slip through people’s defenses.

Some people just do not want to see the truth. They become deluded by what they want to see.

They want their cozy little welfare programs but also less goverment and not understanding these are contradictions their politics flails widely between these two but gradually moving toward complete goverment control.

But you can’t eat your cake and have it too.

The battle can’t be won until most of the people including the independents realize this contradiction and realize they have to grow up and start taking care of themselves.