Posted on 12/12/2019 1:34:53 PM PST by Perseverando
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., was born OCTOBER 27, 1858.
As a child, he had debilitating asthma, often waking up at night as if being smothered to death.
At 6-years-old, he watched Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession from the window of his grandfather's mansion in Union Square, New York City.
Theodore was home-schooled as a child, becoming fascinated with animals and zoology after seeing a dead seal in a local market.
His father, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., was a successful New York business leader, who helped raise support for the Union during the Civil War.
Young Theodore described him:
"My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best man I ever knew. He combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and great unselfishness. He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness."
His father took the family on trips to Europe in 1869 and 1870, and Egypt in 1872, and helped found New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
At 15-years-old, Roosevelt wrote of their trip to Jerusalem:
"In the afternoon we went to the Wailing Place of the Jews."
After being accosted by older boys on a camping trip, Roosevelt began exercising.
He became an accomplished boxer and a third-degree brown belt in judo.
He entered Harvard in 1876.
He was devastated in 1878 upon news of the sudden death of his father, who had told him:
"Take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies."
After graduation, he attended Columbia University Law School in New York.
While there, at the age of 23, he wrote a significant book, The Naval War of 1812 (published in 1882).
The book was so well received that just four years later, the U.S. Navy ordered a copy of
(Excerpt) Read more at myemail.constantcontact.com ...
Some have argued that it sowed the seeds of WWI,
That is laughable ! I studied European history in college and during that time all the major countries in Europe went on a Huge military buildup while forming secrete alliances. These guys were spoiling for a fight, and Any excuse would start it.
Think about it. A Serbian terrorist throws a bomb into a car that kills The Arch Duke and his wife started that Damn War!
Okay, at least now I understand how you got to there from your statement. I think that this is a bit of an excessive extrapolation from too little data.
It might be correct, but I would have to give it a great deal more thought before I would agree that it was.
Yes, the Spanish American war gave us the Philippines, but if that was such a big thing to us, why did we give them up voluntarily?
Maybe our interest in stopping Japan hinged on our interests in the Philippines, but I'm not certain we wouldn't have intervened anyways.
I still don't see how you blame Teddy for us getting into WW1. I still see that as Wilson's blunder.
Teddy Roosevelt was from the other branch of progressivism. He was a nationalist, whereas Woodrow Wilson was an internationalist. Conservatives have never gotten along with either branch of progressivism.
TR spoke German and actually translated some of the works of Frederick Nietzsche, which he then liberally plagiarized for his own speeches.
In Europe, with had the same split, the nationalist progressives became fascists, and the international progressives embraced communism.
Same
Agreed. The Germans were biting at the bit to go to war. In those days war was still viewed in romantic terms. That ended when men saw their comrades torn apart by machine guns, asphyxiated with chemicals, shelled and made to endure trench warfare.
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