Posted on 03/09/2012 8:28:13 AM PST by ProgressingAmerica
Not Teddy, Franklin.
I am pretty sure that the quote was TR’s.
There is a lot to approve of in Theodore Roosevelt’s character and life, but not his aggressive Progressivism. And he was a BIG fan of the Prussian style of governance.
He was a Representative, Police Commissioner of NY, Under-Secretary of the Navy, a Colonel in the US Army, Vice President and President before turning 50. He also won the Nobel Peace Prize...oh yeah, and was awarded the Medal of Honor.
What have you done?
Never judge historical figures by today’s standards.
TEDDY Roosevelt was the first president to suggest national health care!
He WAS, very definitely, a progressive and thus hostile to our founding ideals!
Teddy, too.
I’m reading “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt” by Edmund Morris right now.
It’s an amazing book.
TR was a freak. He despised Thomas Jefferson and Jeffersonian government. He much preferred the Alexander Hamilton model.
TR was a major progressive and was a supporter of eugenics.
Fascinating man, but very dangerous in his grandiose thinking.
Teddy Roosevelt was a “progressive era” president (and admirer of Alexander Hamilton) who is credited with being a great environmentalist for having nationalized thousands of acres of land and built dams and other “consevation” projects with taxpayer dollars. But this,too, was a form of Neo-Hamiltonian corporate welfare. Mining, farming, timber, and other interests lobbied for these programs because they would be enriched with “free” dams and irrigation, waterway improvements, cheap, subsidized water (mostly for agriculture), cheap timber land (leased for next to nothing from the government), and cheap access to grazing lands
“I think the President is clearly insane in several ways, and insanest upon war and its supreme glories. I think he longs for a big war wherein he can spectacularly perform as chief general and chief admiral… Mr. Roosevelt is the Tom Sawyer of the political world of the twentieth century; always showing off; always hunting for a chance to show off; in his frenzied imagination the great republic is a vast Barnum circus with him for a clown and the whole world for an audience.”
— Mark Twain on Theodore Roosevelt
John McCain said that Teddy Roosevelt was his role model:
“I count myself as a conservative Republican, yet I view it to a large degree in the Theodore Roosevelt mold.”
Conservatives come in several varieties. These include the limited-government, Jeffersonian variety; the big-government, militant, national greatness variety; the nanny-state social conservative variety; and the country-club Republican variety.
Republicans come in several varieties. Conservatives do not.
Conservatism by its definition is small government. Nanny state Republicans and Country Club Republicans and other Big Government Republicans can’t be Conservatives. Baby Bush fancied himself a Conservative but in the end, he proved not to be one with the TSA, Homeland Security, big wars, Medicare D and the bailouts.
We haven’t had a Conservative president since Reagan.
The quote was Teddy.
Yes, he was a progressive, no doubt about that. Don’t get fooled by the Republican in front of his title (Hoover was even worse).
Teddy was sort of a Ford styled progressive. Ford believed in meddling in the personal life of his employees.
But Jefferson was right about rejecting the pro-Federal government model of Hamilton. I think present history shows that Jefferson was right to warn us about the strong federal government that Hamilton was so much in favor of.
Yes, and he called it Compassionate Conservatism. Ugh.
Yes, Teddy. While TR was an attractive personality in many ways he was first and foremost an elitist. You just have to read his autobiography to see it. He just drips with the elitism that motivates most of society's tormentors. I'd love to have him as a neighbor but would never vote for him.
Jefferson was WAY wrong about France. Sober, rational people tried to tell him that the revolution in France was missing the key ingredients of the American Revolution.
No doubt that's your definition of conservatism, and many self-described conservatives would agree. But lots of folks, like McCain in the example I referred to, have different definitions. Here's a good definition as it relates to politicians in the 21st century:
Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. [Ambrose Bierce, "Devil's Dictionary," 1911]
WRT to Bush II, he supposed it necessary to create "compassionate conservatism" to save conservatism just like he had to "abandon free market principles to save the free market." Of course, he didn't do it all by himself; he had help from the likes of towering conservative intellects like Rove, Frum, Gerson, Dreher and Brooks. And before that, Bush I made short work of Buchanan's paleoconservatism with his own "kinder, gentler" version of conservatism.
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