Theodore Roosevelt Appreciation Thread

[TheGlyphstone]

Someone should start a Teddy Roosevelt Appreciation Thread - give a thread to a badass president instead of lame ones.

[HannibalBarca]

Teddy was pretty badass.  Also a racist, though.  Then again, considering the times, most white people were racist then.  Come to think of it, looking to polls, it seems like most white people are racist today, too.

[legomaster00156]

Teddy was pretty badass.  Also a racist, though.  Then again, considering the times, most white people were racist then.  Come to think of it, looking to polls, it seems like most white people are racist today, too.

I think it's more accurate to say that most white people are not racist, but are not so opposed to racists as to avoid consorting with them.

[Vekseid]

Someone should start a Teddy Roosevelt Appreciation Thread - give a thread to a badass president instead of lame ones.

Good idea, we need a more positive thread in here. Racism aside.

Thank you for volunteering!

[TheGlyphstone]

Thank you!

So, today's Teddy Roosevelt fact:

Most people know about his Bull Moose Party, and how he led the Rough Riders in a charge up San Juan Hill. But far fewer people know about the time when he teamed up with Thomas Edison's ghost to steal a time machine from H.G. Wells and use it to prevent Hitler's clone from conquering the Martians.

[Oniya]

Speaking of the 'bully pulpit' - Teddy's the one that originated the phrase.  At the time, the word 'bully' had a far different connotation, and rather than meaning 'using ones office to browbeat others', the phrase meant 'Gee, this is a really great way for me to get the word out to a lot of people!'

[Remiel]

One of my all-time favorite quotes from TR:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

[ReijiTabibito]

Teddy was pretty badass.  Also a racist, though.  Then again, considering the times, most white people were racist then.  Come to think of it, looking to polls, it seems like most white people are racist today, too.

It's worth pointing out that Roosevelt did something that no other President prior to him had ever done - he invited Booker T. Washington to the White House to personally have dinner with him and his family.  Washington was considered one of the two leaders of the black community in those days, the other being the inestimable W.E.B DuBois.  While other such figures - such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth - had been given invitations to the White House before, they had almost always been of an official 'state business' nature: Douglass had been there to speak to Lincoln about equal pay for black soldiers fighting in the Union army; Truth was there during the Grant administration to get land concessions in the territories for freedmen.  But something like dinner with the President and his family?  That was a highly personal gesture, back in those days.  However, the Southern press heard of it, and such was their condemnation (and that if their in-pocket politicians) that no such invitations were given out for another thirty years.

Furthermore, DuBois - the one aforementioned - was a bit more distant figure, but he came to support Roosevelt during his 1912 bid for the Presidency, sent him a letter thanking him for his condemnation of a race riot in St. Louis in 1917, and even personally introduced him for the last public speech Roosevelt ever gave - the Circle of  War Relief at Carnegie Hall.

Roosevelt didn't speak in a lot of his well-known addresses about things like segregation and racial discrimination - things considered the electric 'third rail' of politics in those days - but we do have quite a bit of material on what his stance on immigration was, and they were a discriminated-against people, too.  And from that, I think we can ascertain what his stance on the 'third rail' issues were: that Americans were Americans, regardless of their 'creed, or birthplace, or origin.'  But, such was the power of the anti-integrationist movement, and its proponents, that Roosevelt could not make that heard.

On another note, if you read any of his speeches, get your hands on a copy of his 1915 address to the Knights of Columbus at Carnegie Hall -  I reread it recently and it spoke to me a lot about our politics today.

[Oniya]

Written after he had left office, when there was some push-back over his critique of then-President Wilson's reluctance to enter WWI

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

    — The Kansas City Star, 7 May 1918