"Leader of The Free World"
The "Leader of the Free World" is a colloquialism, first used during the Cold War, to describe either the United States or the President of the United States. The term, when used in this context, suggests that the United States is the principal democratic superpower, and the U.S. President is, by extension, the leader of the world's democratic states, i.e. the "Free World". The phrase had its origin in the late 1940s, and has become more widely used since the early 1950s. It was heavily referenced in American foreign policy up until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, and has since fallen out of use, in part due to its usage in anti-American rhetoric.
Read more about this topic: Free World (World War II)
Famous quotes containing the words free world, leader of, leader, free and/or world:
“By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels’ wives.”
—Frances Fitzgerald (b. 1940)
“To be a leader of men one must turn one’s back on men.”
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939)
“Just as every conviction begins as a whim so does every emancipator serve his apprenticeship as a crank. A fanatic is a great leader who is just entering the room.”
—Heywood Broun (1888–1939)
“I struck the board, and cried, “No more.
I will abroad.”
What? Shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free; free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit?”
—George Herbert (1593–1633)
“In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn’t threaten us.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)