One Hundred Years Ago Today (Updated)

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Theodore Roosevelt “The duty of Congress is to provide a method by which the interest of the whole people shall be all that receives consideration.” — Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

An article by Chuck Collins and Sam Pizzigati at Common Dreams reminded me that one hundred years ago today Theodore Roosevelt delivered his New Nationalism speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, to an audience of Civil War veterans. Weirdly, Collins and Pizzigati do not provide a link to the speech. So here it is: “The New Nationalism,” Theodore Roosevelt.

It’s sad to realize that much of what TR said in that speech would get him branded as a far-left Marxist extremist today, including the rather mild quote at the top of this post. Indeed, this speech makes our current president look downright conservative.

I once heard someone call the “New Nationalism” speech the foundation of modern liberalism, and I have to agree. That’s not to say that TR was completely liberal by our standards today. As a man of his day, he harbored some racist and sexist views. But then, so did Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. We are all creatures of our cultural conditioning.

But this speech lays out the broad principles of liberalism well, better than anything that came before it. And better that most stuff that came after it, for that matter. A shame nobody read this speech to the tea partiers this weekend. Many heads would have exploded.

Elsewhere — I’m a bit tired of doom and gloom, so I’m posting a couple of links to cheerful stories.

Not your ordinary horseshoe — the story of Molly the pony, with adorable pictures.

Shocker — a Christian minister who is actually, um, Christian.

Update: Yes! I knew it! Here is Glenn Beck from this past February at CPAC, calling Theodore Roosevelt a socialist. Beck pointed to this section of the New Nationalism speech —

We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.

Dana Milbank describes what happened next:

“Is this what the Republican Party stands for?” Beck demanded. He was answered with boos and cries of “no!” “It’s big government, it’s a socialist utopia and we need to address it as if it is a cancer.”

Obama, no doubt, will be delighted to learn that he has been joined in the conservatives’ ire by the Hero of San Juan Hill.

Jonah Goldberg agreed with Beck, utterly mangling what Roosevelt was saying in the process.

19 thoughts on “One Hundred Years Ago Today (Updated)”

  1. TR wouldn’t get nominated, let alone elected, dogcatcher running as a Democrat in Madison, WI, San Fransico, CA, or Woodstock and New Paltz, NY. He’d be way too Liberal.
    I don’t know why they need all of this eliminationist talk about Liberals and
    Liberalism. It seems like we’re all dying off just fine on our own.
    I still can’t for the life of me understand how fear and xenophobia beat our messages. I think we chose a really bad PR firm in the Democratic Party. I mean, how bad are they when, for the life of them, they can’t even explain how Health Care for everyone isn’t a ‘Death Panel” for Gramps and Grandma?
    Assholes. Worthless assholes. Worthless, greedy assholes. Worthless, greedy, stupid assholes. I’d continue, but I’m way past repeating myself.

  2. I saw something on the Ovation channel a few weeks ago about Andalusia. It turns out that Cordova was a major Moorish capital in Spain, and so the region has a long history of both Christian and Islamic presence. I suspect the Christian minister in question is simply reflecting the “let’s get along” attitude that’s prevalent among the general population in the area. We obviously need more of that here.

  3. I read/skimmed/saved TR’s New Nationalism speech – thank you so much for posting it. The only thing I can say to the mean-spirited, small minded people who would spit on what TR said, is “why do you hate America?”

  4. The ‘old’ Republicans – certainly applies to T. Roosevelt – not necessarily conservative, practiced and preached self-reliance. Through the years, probably starting with Reagan, Republicans have given themselves permission to include shitting on others to achieve their self-reliance, and that’s made them ugly.

    The Republican mantra-ad-nauseam, lower (or no according to Norquist) taxes, translated, means don’t tax me, tax someone else. Even a Republican must understand that he must rely on the federal government to do for him what he can’t do for himself and that someone has to pay for it but rather than admitting same he has chosen to pass the buck to the other guy freeing him to practice his coveted self-reliance – at the other guy’s expense.

  5. Felicity,
    Whoreporate Welfare is fine!
    But if people need help, they’re useless leaches sucking the goverment tits dry of the money stolen from their fellow hard working citizens.
    And that money could be so much better used for Whoreporate Welfare.

  6. Wow, that last article was in the Memphis newspaper? Awesome. (“Commercial Appeal” is a bit of a misnomer!)

  7. It’s a truly excellent speech, and one that I can’t recall ever having read in full before.

    […] my fellow citizens, each one of you carries on your shoulders not only the burden of doing well for the sake of your country, but the burden of doing well and of seeing that this nation does well for the sake of mankind.

    Later restated in JFK’s inaugural address as “ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

    No man is worth his salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which he does not keep after election; and, if he makes such a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out of public life.

    Harsh. I wonder if there are any politicians in office who would pass this test. Hell, would Roosevelt himself have passed it…? That said, the sentiment is good: the people should hold each and every politician strictly to their claims and promises.

    One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now.

    This is in such stark contrast to the modern Republican party. Now, “healthy liberty” is regarded as power for its own sake, regardless of whether it was earned honestly or fairly.

    At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth.

    The destruction of privilege is now considered to be an infringement on dedicated, even sacred, property rights. Expanding opportunity is “socialism”.

    I stand for the square deal. But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service.

    Changing regulations? Enforcing regulations? Why, that’s communism! You can’t interfere with the invisible hand of the free market. Hell, that’s why it’s invisible.

    I would also like to note that a century later we still don’t have equal pay for equal work, and the bias cuts largely against women and brown people. All the more-so for those living in “lesser” countries.

    Now, this means that our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. That is one of our tasks to-day. Every special interest is entitled to justice-full, fair, and complete-and, now, mind you, if there were any attempt by mob-violence to plunder and work harm to the special interest, whatever it may be, that I most dislike, and the wealthy man, whomsoever he may be, for whom I have the greatest contempt, I would fight for him, and you would if you were worth your salt. He should have justice. For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation.

    One of the best sections of the whole speech. Certainly, we must drive the special interests out of politics. Now, not a century ago. We also need to drive them out of the media and our centers of information and learning.

    It might not have needed to be said, but Teddy also makes clear that the means to accomplish such changes are not by the formation of mobs or by violence. These aren’t problems that will be solved by demonizing and slaughtering each other.

    There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.

    Talk about the understatement of the century.

    We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.

    Disclose Act? Citizens United? How little things change.

    We have come to recognize that franchises should never be granted except for a limited time, and never without proper provision for compensation to the public. It is my personal belief that the same kind and degree of control and supervision which should be exercised over public-service corporations should be extended also to combinations which control necessaries of life, such as meat, oil, or coal, or which deal in them on an important scale. I have no doubt that the ordinary man who has control of them is much like ourselves. I have no doubt he would like to do well, but I want to have enough supervision to help him realize that desire to do well.

    Regulation and oversight of essential commodities? What a radical. Let’s just let food and energy prices spiral out of control and small groups of already rich bastards suck up all of the benefits.

    I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.

    Oh, there is justice due for the robber barons and the bankers of our age. But it’s awfully slow coming at this pace.

    The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. […] We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.

    Emphasis mine. It is truly amazing, and furthermore commendable, that a man with views like this was actually elected president of the United States. I’ve had my doubts about Teddy in the past, but speeches like this truly make clear why his likeness is on Mt. Rushmore. His clarity of purpose, dedication to the truth, understanding of justice and opportunity, and courage to press sound and intelligent policy was stunning.

    The efforts he and his allies made towards establishing the income and estate taxes, trust-busting and business regulation, fighting corruption and unearned privilege generally, expanding democratic control, as well as conservation and good stewardship of national resources undoubtedly had a big impact on the history of this country.

    • kagerato — I’m glad you liked the speech. Truly, it should be required reading for all Americans. And consider that your standard conservative believes Theodore Roosevelt was a conservative. During the 2008 campaign John McCain was going around comparing himself to Theodore Roosevelt. The only thing they know about TR is that he said “carry a big stick.”

  8. “And consider that your standard conservative believes Theodore Roosevelt was a conservative”

    I would argue that with the purposeful dwindling IQ of the republicant party combined with the inter-mixing of the dimwitted teabaggers most republicants / teabaggers would think Teddy Roosevelt was the great Satan who authored the “new deal” and created that ponzi scheme “social security”. History is for libruls!

  9. I will say this for Beck, he certainly draws a line in the sand, going after TR and his New Nationalism, and repudiating the teachings of Jesus Christ, going after “social justice” (see well known verses from Matthew 25).

  11. Why are people talking so much about Glenn Beck? Why don’t you let this stuff just die of its own stupidity? It’s not even interesting.

    • Why don’t you let this stuff just die of its own stupidity?

      Over the past 20 years ago, can you think of any issue in American politics that actually died of its own stupidity?

  12. I’m so glad to see this speech getting wider coverage. It’s been a favorite of mine for a long time. I am a big TR fan. He was one of our country’s first environmentalists too.
    My favorite part of the speech is so spot on to me that I use it as a sig line in my email. It is noted above but worth repeating:

    At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. ….At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth.

  14. Good comments! I haven’t read this speech, thanks for bringing it to my attention. That Cargo Cult clip is something really cool too. Look at the comments…

  15. Of course, when it comes to immigration and the assimilation of new arrivals (i.e. cutting all ties with the culture that nurtured you), TR is a hero. I have seen his remarks on what a real American is quoted repeatedly by those who get themselves into a rage over such indignities as public school bulletins rinted in Somali, or a Cinco de Mayo festival getting news coverage.

    Adulation truly is a fickle thing.

    • Adulation truly is a fickle thing.

      As I said in the post, TR was a racist by today’s standards. His stands on some non-domestic issues were appalling to the liberals of his time, never mind liberals today. But he “got” social and economic justice brilliantly.

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