Your’s is a lame ‘for the children’ defense; typical of the Left.
Child labor laws had been a social issue well before TR and would have become law with or without TR.
TR was the first president to spend taxpayer dollars on a grand peacetime Navy. This was but one symptom of his global vision for America, but it all cost much more than the nation had been accustomed to spending, hence leading to progressive tendencies of power grab and calling for taxation of income without apportionment.
TR was not popular at the end of his presidency because of his overreach tendencies, his resorting to certain tactics to denigrate his opposition, his acts of self-embellishment.
You have one point that is accurate, TR had regrets later in life. He was capable of looking back and seeing the error of his ways. But he was not steeped enough in Christian philosophy to see the nature of mankind and its government to take precedent from seemingly innocent things and grow them into horrors. That’s why Beck calls TR out on his history, because TR could not ‘see’ the dangers behind the doors he opened with good intentions.
But TR is not completely to blame. In his time there were many people behind a plethora of populist causes; “Child Labor Laws”, the beginnings of “income taxation” and socialist Marxist philsophy. Marx was not yet a discredited economic philsophy, rather a popular egalitarian subject of political philosophy.
In short, the era of TR and especially the years that followed were awful for America. From a slate of populist issues, laws that were short-sighted were passed and even amendments to the Constitution were made that forever changed the character of freedom in America. Child labor laws were one of many laws that shifted power from states to the federal government. In the years following, it was used as one of the precedents for minimum wage laws, forced retirement savings such as Social Security and a number of socialist trophy issues that are now bankrupt and have culminated in the ultimate theft of American freedom in Health Care reform, the governance of our health.
It’s time to shift power back to states, to reverse the century of overreaching influence starting from the time of TR, repealing the 16th and 17th, and replacing the US Tax code with a growth inspiring and freedom preserving new tax code:
The State governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal government; whilst the latter is nowise essential to the operation or organization of the former. Without the intervention of the State legislatures, the President of the United States cannot be elected at all. They must in all cases have a great share in his appointment, and will, perhaps, in most cases, of themselves determine it. The Senate will be elected absolutely and exclusively by the State legislatures. Even the House of Representatives, though drawn immediately from the people, will be chosen very much under the influence of that class of men, whose influence over the people obtains for themselves an election into the State legislatures. Thus, each of the principal branches of the federal government will owe its existence more or less to the favor of the State governments, and must consequently feel a dependence, which is much more likely to beget a disposition too obsequious than too overbearing towards them. On the other side, the component parts of the State governments will in no instance be indebted for their appointment to the direct agency of the federal government, and very little, if at all, to the local influence of its members.
THIS my friend is what has been lost and until we restore it we will never again be what our founders intended!