Yeah. Teddy was a racist and religious bigot! A man from a past generation. We’re way more enlightened now!
“Enlightened” is such a confusing term. A balloon filled with helium is “enlightened” all right - so enlightened it will drift up into the higher reaches of the atmosphere until it bursts and falls back to earth, an unrecognized and usually unidentifiable wisp of itself.
Teddy had his own issues with the “Barbary pirates” of his day. The Moroccan pirate, Mulay Ahmad al-Raysuni, captured a former resident of the US, Ion Perdicaris, who by then (1904) was an expatriate living in Tangiers.
Roosevelt and his Secretary of State, John Hay, talking tough at the Republican Convention. Hay declared to thunderous applause that “the government wants Perdicaris alive, or Raisuli dead!”
Pretty effective rallying cry.