The four freedoms referenced here were the Allies' professed goals in fighting World War II. In response to the brutalities of fascist regimes (the Holocaust being the main example), the original wartime United Nations portrayed its fight as a human rights crusade. The UDHR was in many ways a direct response to the human rights violations of the war.

It's easy to overlook how progressive this declaration was at the time. In the late 1940s, institutional discrimination against people of color was the norm in many parts of the United States. It was only with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that the U.S. would catch up to the high standards set by the UDHR.

It wasn't until the Allies liberated the concentration camps late in the war that the full extent of Nazi atrocities became clear. This article is probably the text's most direct response to the Nazi persecution of Jews and other minorities. Arbitrarily dragging people out of their homes and shooting, torturing, or throwing them in jail are favorite tactics of terrorists and despots everywhere.

The UDHR places special value on marriage and the family as the "fundamental group unit of society" (16.4). Giving both parties in marriage full and equal rights was a radical move in 1948. In many parts of the world, traditional marriages made women into the property of their husbands, with no rights at all. Even in the U.S., it wasn't until 1974 that a married woman could get a loan or a credit card under her own name—her husband had to co-sign, even if she made more than he did. Where's the fun in that?

What's freedom if not the ability to say and think what you want, especially when it comes to whether the world really needed a remake of Psycho? (It did not.) Anyway, this provision of the declaration was a key value in Western Europe and America, but communist nations dissented. In Soviet bloc countries, the ruling party wanted to limit information—so that you could only say, hear, and see stuff that supported a socialist agenda and ideology.