In moments of national crisis, a nation discovers whether its founding principles are merely words on paper, or values worth defending.

As the 150th anniversary of the United States Bill of Rights approached in December 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted the anniversary to do more than commemorate history, he wanted it to remind Americans what they stood for.

To accomplish that, Roosevelt turned to one of the most gifted storytellers in broadcasting: Norman Corwin.

After research at the Library of Congress, Corwin was on a train returning to Los Angles to prepare for the broadcast when he learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, plunging the United States into war. Unsure whether a commemorative program still made sense amid the shock of the attack, Corwin telephoned the White House.

As Corwin later told me, he asked Roosevelt, “In light of the attack on Pearl Harbor, should we continue with the program? Do we even need a program at this time?”

Roosevelt didn’t hesitate. “We need it now more than ever.”

Eight days later, on December 15, 1941—exactly 150 years after the Bill of Rights was ratified—the program aired nationwide. The all-star cast included Jimmy Stewart, Edward G. Robinson, Walter Huston, Lionel Barrymore, Orson Welles and Edward Arnold.

At a moment when dictatorships dominated much of Europe and Asia, the program reminded listeners that the freedoms Americans took for granted—speech, worship, due process—were precisely what totalitarian regimes had destroyed.

Corwin concluded the dramatic portion of the broadcast with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” When the music ended, the microphone passed to Roosevelt.

That evening, Americans were reminded that the freedoms contained in the Bill of Rights were living principles, principles the nation had now been called upon to defend.

More than eighty years later, in a time marked by cultural division and political upheaval, Roosevelt’s words still speak with a clarity that reaches beyond their moment. Here’s a portion of what he said:

“There is not a country, large or small, on this continent and in this world which has not felt the influence of that document, directly or indirectly.

“But in the year 1933, there came to power in Germany a political clique which did not accept the declarations of the American bill of human rights as valid: a small clique of ambitious and unscrupulous politicians whose announced an admitted platform was precisely the destruction of the rights that instrument declared. …

“What we face is nothing more nor or less than an attempt to overthrown and to cancel out the great upsurge of human liberty of which the American Bill of Rights is the fundamental document; to force the peoples of the earth and among them, the peoples of this continent, and this nation, to accept again the absolute authority and despotic rule from which the courage and the resolution and the sacrifices of their ancestors liberated them many, many years ago.

“In an attempt, an attempt which could only succeed only if those who have inherited the gift of liberty had lost the manhood to preserve it. But we Americans know that the determination of this generation of our people, our generation, to preserve liberty is as fixed and certain as the determination of that earlier generation of Americans was to win it.

“We will not, under any threat, or in the face of any danger, surrender the guarantees of liberty our forefathers framed for us in our Bill of Rights.

“We hold with all the passion of our hearts and minds to those commitments of the human spirit.

“We are solemnly determined that no power or combination of powers of this earth shall shake our hold upon them.”