I wrote earlier this week about Time Magazine’s July 3rd issue focusing on the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. In that same vein, Thomas at Liberty Corner has a post up that pointed me to several articles that shed a different light on the Roosevelt legacy.
First, Thomas Sowell has an article at Townhall directly responding to the Time Magazine portrayal of Roosevelt Some highlights:
Theodore Roosevelt was indeed a landmark figure in the development of American politics and government, but in a very different sense from the way he is portrayed in Time magazine. In fact, the way that Theodore Roosevelt has been celebrated by many in the media and among the intelligentsia tells us more about them than about the first President Roosevelt.
Sowell goes on to debunk many of the praises that Time piled on Roosevelt:
According to Time magazine, TR believed that “government had the right to moderate the excesses of free enterprise.” Just what were these excesses? According to Time, “poverty, child labor, dreadful factory conditions.”
All these things were attributed to the growth of industrial capitalism — without the slightest evidence that any of them was better before the growth of industrial capitalism. Nothing is easier than to imagine some ideal past or future society or to imagine that the net result of government intervention is bound to be a plus.
And then there is Roosevelt’s legacy as a “trust buster”:
According to Time magazine, TR believed that “government had the right to moderate the excesses of free enterprise.” Just what were these excesses? According to Time, “poverty, child labor, dreadful factory conditions.”
All these things were attributed to the growth of industrial capitalism — without the slightest evidence that any of them was better before the growth of industrial capitalism. Nothing is easier than to imagine some ideal past or future society or to imagine that the net result of government intervention is bound to be a plus.
So, it appears, the reason that Roosevelt is so well-liked today is because was in many respects the intellectual father of modern progressivism. They like him because they agree with him.
Then there is this alternate view of Roosevelt which is far less rose-colored than Time:
Roosevelt was an “activist” President. Roosevelt used what he called the “bully pulpit” of the presidency to gain popular support for programs that exceeded the limits set in the Constitution. Roosevelt was especially willing to use the power of government to regulate business and to break up companies that had become successful by offering products that consumers wanted. Roosevelt was typical of politicians who inherited a lot of money and didn’t understand how successful businesses provided jobs and useful products for less-wealthy Americans.
And then there’s the fact that, thanks to his interventionist foreign policy, Roosevelt would have gotten us involved in World War One far earlier than Woodrow Wilson did. The only thing that would have come from that is more dead Americans in the trenches of Europe fighting a war between Kings.
I tend to get suspicious whenever intellectuals start praising long-dead Presidents. They usually have a motive other than historical interest. In this case, its clear that praise for Roosevelt has the ulterior motive of hoping to expand the state he loved so dearly.
