The image and personality of TR is seductive to Conservatives but the reality is a different matter. He was a progressive big Government guy who started a lot of the overreach we are suffering today.
Theodore Roosevelt was a pos and shouldn’t have been included on Mt Rushmore.
No where near as close to undermining the Constitution as Wilson & FDR!
You mean when Trump took a position establishing a balance between federalism and state’s rights?
The same balance our founding fathers wanted?
IMHO, it was the 17th Amendment that really destroyed federalism.
This article strains to make a point. For contemporary purposes, Teddy Roosevelt and Trump are most similar in being Republican presidents from New York with flamboyant, dominating personalities. The charge that Teddy Roosevelt was a constitution wrecker is the sort of arcane, history based argument that so often makes conservatives into super nerds out of touch with current political realities.
What?
Some issues are state and some are federal.
Trump is very consistant, i.e. abortion is a state issue, while the illigality of FISA is a federal issue.
Abortion should be a state issue because of the 10 Amendment: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-10/
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
It is an extreme over-reach to pretend that somehow abortion is a civil right which the federal government has to protect. There is no Constitutional nexus for abortion.
This is a fabulous article. Not a fan of Teddy. He ran as the Ross Perot of his day and elected Wilson, easily one of the worst three presidents.
I expected hate about TR.
FDR undermined the Constitution, did it deliberately. TR added federalism, at a time of very rural America to trust it to the world power it would become.
We need neither, we need someone to champion the Constitution and give power back to people, no FedGov.
Trumps the best we got for that.
No. The one who trampled on the constitution more than any other was clearly Lincoln.
Nixon loved TR also. I never understood it .
But the author is critical of Trump saying correctly that the matter of abortion is for the states. of course it is matter for the states. The constitution says so. The federal government never had authority to regulate abortion. They stole it. And now it’s been returned to the states and the people as the constitution requires. I think the author has a learning disability. He talks about President McKinley being assassinated and then dying!
So many bla bla bla words
One short sentence. Where has Trump ever tried to undermine the Constitution?
If he mean the dem’s interpretation and bastardization of the constitution then that’s different but that’s not the constitution
Pointless argument. It’s the left that wastes energy worrying about historical figures.
Trump is a businessman who felt the wind blowing toward freedom and rode it into politics. That puts him, ego etc. and all, on a par with the great leaders and defenders of freedom in our past.
TR is admired because he was a fighter. FDR was a lot smoother and more slippery. Some of the things TR fought for are questionable now — imperialism and racialism as well as big government — but he’s still going to attract some admirers because of the fight in him. It’s similar with Andrew Jackson.
I started running the progressingamerica project around 2010 - then at the time (myself) not fully realizing the full extent of Theodore Roosevelt’s progressivism. I had only then started to begin to realize the larger-than-life role that Woodrow Wilson played. Nevertheless, -
This is a huge contradiction that the conservative movement is going to have to resolve. We cannot hold out Progressivism as America’s Cancer then do an about-face and hold out Theodore Roosevelt as the “good progressive” while carving out an exception for him that he did not earn and does not deserve. Calling this a cognitive dissonance is right on the money. There is no such thing as a good progressive, no progressive deserves a get-out-of-jail-free card for the damage they have done.
Any time I’ve pointed out TR’s big government love, his globalism, his anti-constitutional rhetoric and actions, it never earns me cred as an anti-progressive - not that that’s what I seek its merely commentary on the end result. I’m allowed to discuss the end results of these things. The reality is when I record words that Theodore Roosevelt spoke and create downloadable audio books out of them, it’s an attack on the U.S. constitution that I’m forced to make come to life. That’s what TR represented, but that should not be my fault for recording it, it should be TR’s fault for saying it(or if an action, for doing it) in the first place.
My first completed and released audio book was “Philip Dru, Administrator”, as an expression of my realization about what Wilson represented and still to this day represents - but admittedly Woodrow Wilson is only 50%. When studying the deep state/administrative state you actively have to lie to yourself to ignore that TR is smiling back at you in the mix. In order to reach 100% you must consider both Wilson and TR at the same time.
TR was who he was and we need to accept that. If he were alive today we would call TR an Obamunist and mock him. Obama was a fighter, but who cares? He fought for all the wrong things. Above all, the single-most undeniable fact of all facts that nobody on the planet can deny: Theodore Roosevelt was in fact America’s first progressive president. There is no way to avoid this. You can only hide from it. That’s where it begins.
Conservatives want more than anything to be rid of progressivism. Except. Conservatives also want more than anything to claim Theodore Roosevelt as their own. Only one can stand. The other must fall.
I welcome anybody who wants more than anything to defend Theodore Roosevelt - listen to the New Nationalism speech. I guarantee it will make your stomach churn. Who cares if he hunted a lion. He hated the Constitution. That is what matters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzj9-cHMLwY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCtFyrisfvM
Not even one quote from one single Trump supporter praising Roosevelt?
What might Trump do?
vs.
What will the DoJ and FBI, FISA, DHS, CIA continue to do?
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