By Lolo Bobby M. Reyes of Sorsogon City, Philippines, and West Covina, California

Remembering Today Carlos Bulosan’s “Freedom from Want,” President FDR, Norman Rockwell and the Predicted Armageddon by the Next Century

E very Fourth of July, this journalist remembers Carlos Bulosan, a fellow Filipino writer in America. Mr. Bulosan was commissioned by the editors of the then-Saturday Evening Post Magazine, to write an essay that was published on March 6, 1943. It was one of the commissioned essays on the Four Freedoms.

The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6, 1941. In an address known as the "Four Freedoms" speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy:

Freedom of speech and expression

Freedom of worship

Freedom from want

Freedom from fear

Readers may want to read more details in this URL:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms

Mr. Bulosan’s celebrated essay can be accessed at this URL:

http://www.oovrag.com/essays/essay2008c-4.shtml

And today, as in every July Fourth that I have savored to like more than the fireworks, I look again at Norman Rockwell’s painting on “Freedom from Want,” as may be seen in this URL:

http://www.best-norman-rockwell-art.com/norman-rockwell-saturday-evening-post-article-1943-03-06-freedom-from-want.html

When our crops are burned or plowed under, we are angry and confused. Sometimes we ask if this is the real America. Sometimes we watch our long shadows and doubt the future. But we have learned to emulate our ideals from these trials. – Carlos Bulosan

If Carlos Bulosan were alive today, he would have seen on television crops being plowed under in Texas and other farms in the Southern United States because of extreme drought. Corn and other crops are burning under the intense heat of the sun, as the environment suffers from Global Warming.

Will the Apocalypse’s Four Horsemen Replace the Four Freedoms?

This month’s issue of the National Geographic Magazine features an article entitled “How to Feed a Growing Planet.” Here’s the lead paragraph, as written by Amanda Fiegl: “Here’s an uncomfortable math problem: By 2045 Earth’s population will likely have swelled from seven to nine billion people. To fill all those stomachs—while accounting for shifting consumption patterns, climate change, and a finite amount of arable land and potable water—some experts say global food production will have to double. How can we make the numbers add up?”

The vision of a world-wide famine looming in less-than a Biblical generation of 40 years points to Armageddon. With billions of people going hungrier every year, if not every hour, will the bastion of freedom called the United States of America be able to celebrate at all the Fourth of July in 2045? The future may be too ugly to look forward to, unless humanity stops man-made conflicts, wars of attrition, senseless deaths, corruption and all other acts that mock law and order.

Will the Four Freedoms be replaced by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as early as July 4, 2045?

I have summarized visions of the Armageddon and how people can help prevent it in this article: How Baby Boomers and their Children Can “Save” the World by Protecting Ecosystems in their Original Hometowns

It will not take rocket science for the world’s policy-and-decision makers and the voters to understand the perils that Mother Earth and humanity are facing. Humans may become extinct by the next century. Will the leaders – especially politicians – stop looking at the next election and instead work together for the next and coming generations? # # #