Jigs Gardner

Jigs Gardner is an Associate Editor of the St. Croix Review. He writes on literature from the Adirondacks where he may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

When I last wrote about Teddy Roosevelt, #14 in this series, I was interested only in his historical work and his books about ranching in the Dakota Territory, especially in his expository prose, describing it as second only to Thoreau's. I said:

Reading him is like being in the company of a fascinating man of great character and intellect who speaks clearly and gracefully of his experiences.

I was not unacquainted with his writing at the time because I had read The Winning of the West as well as five volumes of his Selected Letters a few years before, but it was not until I recently read a Penguin book, Theodore Roosevelt, an American Mind. Selected Writings, that the full impact of the man in today's context became clear. The politically correct professor, who's obviously scared to death of T.R., has done a good job of selecting and editing the pieces (and writing condescending prefaces), arranging them under convenient headings: The Rough Rider, The Historian, On Politics, On Women, and so on.

By "today's context" I mean the dreadful miasma of political correctness that has spread across the land over the last twenty years or so, censoring speech, wringing apologies from the mildest of offenders, enforcing a regime of lies and hypocrisy, preventing any contrary thoughts and actions. Reading T. R.'s forthright prose in Year Five of Obama is shocking. His views, of course, are anathema: patriotism, strongly differentiated sex roles, motherhood, anti-Greenism (he was a strong conservationist for use), manliness, but it is clear that forceful articulation of his ideas is what is so striking today. He was controversial in his own time; today he is outrageous.

During the past three centuries the spread of the English-speaking peoples over the world's waste spaces has been not only the most striking feature in the world's history, but also the event of all others most far-reaching in its effects and its importance.

It was wholly impossible to avoid conflicts with the weaker race, unless we were willing to see the American continent fall into the hands of some other strong power, and even had we adopted such a ludicrous policy, the Indians themselves would have been upon us.

The worst foe of the poor man is the labor leader, whether philanthropist or politician, who tries to teach him that he is a victim of conspiracy and injustice, when in reality he is merely working out his fate with blood and sweat as the immense majority of men who are worthy of the name always have done and always will have to do.

The patriotism of the village or the belfry is bad, but the lack of all patriotism is even worse.

Those opinions are mildly or wholly controversial, but their expression, so direct, so without qualification or obfuscation is striking; that's what makes people uncomfortable.

Let us not allow the issue of T. R.'s political incorrectness to get in the way of thoughtful consideration of his ideas. Conservatives are very critical of T. R. because of his Progressivism, essentially a preview of F. D. R.'s New Deal, a program displayed in his 1910 speech, "The New Nationalism," which launched his campaign for the GOP nomination in 1912. He called for

. . . a policy of a far more active government interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had . . .

Clearly he meant to aggrandize the power of the government in Washington, and he went even further in his 1912 speech to the Progressive convention:

The betterment which we seek must be accomplished, I believe, mainly through the National Government.

He was the enemy of "special interests" which he thought were fostered by "over division of government powers," making the national government important in the face of state powers. He believed, naively, that Washington would rout those interests while efficiently promoting the true interests of all the people. Poor man! His simplicity on this score - the more the government grew, the more money it took in and spent, the more lobbyists it attracted, and of course the bloated bureaucracy became a power in itself, more and more inefficient. His naivet here is so staggering as to be pitiable. It was, and is, a common delusion among Progressives. Because all citizens have a potential voice in a democratic government, it is especially prone to corruption - everyone wants a lick at the honey pot - which is why it is so important to keep such a government as small as possible.

The book contains more than politics because T. R. was much more than a politician, so the reader can sample, for instance, specimens of his historical writing - The Winning of the West, The Naval War of 1812, The Formation of the National Constitution, and an especially interesting speech he gave to the American Historical Association in 1912 (when he was president of the organization), "History as Literature" - accounts of ranch life, of hunting here and in Africa, as well as his ideas, expressed in speeches and essays, on conservation, on the sexes, on national defense, on race. About that last category there are two pieces on the black, disappointing because T.R., with the best will in the world, could not get beyond Booker Washington's stance that the black could best further his cause by hard work, patience, and good behavior. The radicalism of W. E. DuBois and the newly founded NAACP was beyond him. But it must be remembered that he got into a lot of trouble when he had Washington to dinner at the White House (he would have been horrified by the condition of blacks in city slums now and the racial politics of today's Progressives).

The most interesting entry in the race section is a 1901 review of a book, Racial Death, about declining birth rates, mainly in Europe, but T. R. takes it as a warning to us. This was a fixation of his, one that has proven prophetic, since our reproduction rate has now fallen below the replacement rate of 2.5 children. T. R. wanted women to have four children.

In that connection, I should comment on the selections about women. The first, an address to the National Council of Mothers [!] in 1905 contains this sentiment:

In the last analysis the welfare of the State depends absolutely upon whether or not the average family, the average man and woman and their children, represent the kind of citizenship fit for the foundation of a great nation; and if we fail to appreciate this we fail to appreciate the root morality upon which all healthy civilization is based.

Conservatives would endorse that, I think, but when he goes on to say that "the greatest duty of womanhood" is to be a homemaker, bringing up children "sound in body, mind, and character, and numerous enough so that the race shall increase," I will only commit myself to agree. His essay on "True Americanism," which preaches assimilation of immigrants, says something that casts light on the latest round of sexual fanaticism.

It may be, that in ages so remote that we cannot now understand any of the feelings of those who will dwell in them, patriotism will no longer be regarded as a virtue, exactly as it may be that in those remote ages people will look down upon and disregard monogamic marriage. . .

Well, 109 years have passed, not eons, and "monogamic marriage" is being destroyed in the name of same-sex "marriage," another step in the long campaign against conventional morality of which the nuclear family is a great bulwark. And another consequence is a fall in the birthrate.

The last section, "Critic or Arts and Letters," contains a fine 1911 essay on Dante, as well as a review of the 1913 Armory Show, far famed in the circles of High Modernism. The review, described by the condescending professor as "delightfully reactionary," gave me great pleasure. He refers to the "European 'moderns'" as extremists and says "very little" of their work

. . . seems to be good in and of itself, nevertheless, it has certainly helped any number of American artists to do work that is original and serious.

He could not see ahead, could not see that the European influence would finally overwhelm all but the strongest Americans.

What an amazing man! There is not another president in the twentieth century who could have written such a variety of pieces so intelligently. *