I am under 45 years old
I love the outdoors
I hunt
I am a Republican reformer
I have taken on the Republican Party establishment
I have many children
I have a spot on the national ticket with less than two
years in the governor's office
Who am I?
I am Teddy Roosevelt in 1900.
His image stands alongside Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln on Mount Rushmore. Surveys of scholars have consistently ranked him from third to seventh on the list of greatest American presidents.
Yo, I ranked him at number seven myself. Not too shabby for such an "inexperienced" guy.
13 comments:
You're right, Patrick. I do like it. Some conservatives (like Lemuel) think Teddy was nuts - probably because he was a "maverick" but many great men have been slightly nuts including many of our Founders - and Lincoln.
Patrick-
I thought you would appreciate that. Glad you like it.
Yeah, I remember Lemuel saying something along those lines. I think his point was Teddy had a lot of views that tied in with the progressive movement of those days. Which that might well have been true, but nobody's perfect.
The way these people are going after Palin pisses me the hell off and makes me laugh at the same time. On the one hand I want to tell them to shut the hell up, and on the other hand I want to tell them to keep it up, cos they're just hurting themselves.
Sarah Palin has one great advantage over TR. She is not as crazy as a shithouse rat.
He was wrong because of his progressive views. He said that the constitution should not be allowed to stand in the way of the people getting the legislation "that they want and need". He was a "trust-buster" (this is a bad thing - if you want a great case study in how you've been lied to by the public schools study the true story of Standard Oil).
But he was crazy because of things like the way that he said that when he wore his special cowboy suit that he could accomplish anything. Because witnesses report that on his first hunting trip when he killed his first animal that he abandoned himself to jumping and dancing about whooping with pure glee for a full 20 minutes. Others who were with him in Cuba say that he did the same thing when he killed his first human being.
It is hard not to like some things about the man. However on balance he was a serious nutjob.
Lem-
Yeah, that bit about the Constitution is disturbing, I'll grant you that. He might have thought some people were using the Constitution as an unfounded excuse to defeat good legislation, but it still sets a bad precedent.
I don't know about Standard Oil, but I think he was right about monopolies in general. That can't be good for competition, which he was seemingly trying to promote.
That special cowboy suit thing is hilarious, but I wonder if a lot of that kind of stuff isn't things his enemies made up or exaggerated about him, just like they are doing to Palin today.
TR did have some disturbing anti-laissez faire policies towards oil companies, and his environmental conservation programs, though laudable, coupled with his "trust-busting" succeeded in driving our oil corporations outside the United States to secure our national energy supply.
Worked out nicely, huh?
If I ever get around to doing my Presidential ranking list post, TR's down in the middle of the whole thing before the list turns all Democrat from more worse to worst.
Beamish-
There might not be any oil by now in the US if not for him, did you ever think of that? If they hadn't used anything but US reserves, how much do you think we'd have left by now?
The best case scenario would actually be to go nuclear and natural gas, and develop other forms of energy, and save as much oil as possible to prop up the dollar, like we used to use gold.
Can you imagine how much money a barrel of oil will be worth two hundred years from now?
When you do your list, insisting on all Democrats being at the bottom will look artificial. Strive for more objectivity. Surely you can think of at least a few Democrats who deserve a higher standing than Herbert Hoover.
PT,
There might not be any oil by now in the US if not for him, did you ever think of that? If they hadn't used anything but US reserves, how much do you think we'd have left by now?
Well, we only have a small window of history to experimentally alter, roughly 40 to 50 years, between TR's presidency and the full on international development of oil reserves in Saudi Arabia. Pretty much the first half of the 20th Century, 1909 to 1959.
How would World Wars I and II have turned out if America had dedicated itself to being an energy-secure industrial giant capitalistic developer of its own resources in 1905? [Instead of the mid-war and post-war 1940s]
TR spoke soft, but his stick could have been bigger. He delayed our superpower status by 40 years.
The best case scenario would actually be to go nuclear and natural gas, and develop other forms of energy, and save as much oil as possible to prop up the dollar, like we used to use gold.
I can't wait until one of those T. Boone Pickens natural gas powered cars gets into a wreck and the explosion takes out a city block.
Can you imagine how much money a barrel of oil will be worth two hundred years from now?
Probably nothing. 200 years from now, everything will run on hope and change.
When you do your list, insisting on all Democrats being at the bottom will look artificial. Strive for more objectivity. Surely you can think of at least a few Democrats who deserve a higher standing than Herbert Hoover.
Hoover didn't belong to a party dedicated from its inception to the destruction of the United States of America.
Beamish-
I have nothing against us being a superpower, don't get me wrong, but the idea we should have become a superpower sooner than we did so we could save Europe quicker than we did is a non-starter with me.
We can pull our forces out of world affairs any day now as far as I'm concerned. Let the rest of the world go at each other, then once the rest of the world is reduced to rubble, then we can think about going back in there and picking up the pieces-for ourselves.
Every since we got involved with them it's been one constant headache after another, and we've slowly gone down the tubes. All I see happening if we had done as you suggest we should have is we would be even farther along the road to ruination by now than we already are.
As for the natural gas car explosions, you do know that natural gas would be refined for the purposes of auto fuel to the point that that wouldn't happen don't you?
Frankly, I'm eager to see us adopt hydrogen fuel cells, but the technology isn't there yet, and natural gas does seem like a sensible phase to use until we get to that point. Hydrogen fuel cells are a hell of a lot more sensible than ethanol.
Two hundred years from now a barrel of oil will be at least two hundred dollars a barrel, at the very least. Probably more. Probably a great deal more. I'm telling you, it will eventually be viewed the same as gold. People will be buying oil certificates the same way they are buying Canadian gold now, if the government doesn't grab up as much as they can.
In two hundred years, the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserves will be worth more than all the gold in Fort Knox, probably a hell of a lot more.
That's the best reason I can think of to develop hydrogen, solar, wind, nuclear, natural gas, clean coal, etc., etc. The more the merrier. The quicker we get that stuff ready for our own energy use, the more oil we can put in reserve to back the dollar.
You could conceivably be talking about trillions of dollars in five hundred years.
As far as this arcane history of the Democratic Party you devised, let's imagine that you are right (which I don't say you are, but just for the purposes of this I'll just say you are).
Even if you are right, it doesn't necessarily follow that every Democratic Party officeholder from the time of the party's conception on has joined the Democratic Party with that purpose or ideal in mind.
Some of them might actually have been-gasp-as loyal to America as you are. Admittedly, it might be a very relative few, but let's just suppose there are some.
See, I used to be a loyal Democrat (and still am registered as a Democrat) and the idea that I ever intended to destroy America and the Constitution, and fill mass graves with the body of America's citizens, would certainly have come as news to me.
It might sound somewhat fanatical to you, but I actually view the Bill of Rights with probably the same amount of reverence as you and some of your friends view the Ten Commandments. That is not an exaggeration, by the way.
Now, let's take this one further step, one that seems perfectly logical to me. If you are willing to believe that I am serious and sincere when I say this, isn't it just slightly possible that-just every now and then, mind you-a Democratic party officeholder could rise to some degree of power that feels somewhat the same as I do?
"Two hundred years from now a barrel of oil will be at least two hundred dollars a barrel, at the very least. Probably more. Probably a great deal more. I'm telling you, it will eventually be viewed the same as gold. People will be buying oil certificates the same way they are buying Canadian gold now, if the government doesn't grab up as much as they can."
Patrick,
Where you are wrong about this is that oil is consumed in the using while pretty much every ounce of gold ever mined is still in circulation.
Lem-
Yeah, I actually thought about that later. It is pretty useless if it isn't being used, I guess. Plus that would run the price of simple, everyday items up to where they wouldn't be worth the price, so I guess that's pretty stupid. Shows what happens when you start shooting shit off the top of your head without putting a lot of thought into it. HaHa.
PT,
I have nothing against us being a superpower, don't get me wrong, but the idea we should have become a superpower sooner than we did so we could save Europe quicker than we did is a non-starter with me.
If we had been a rising superpower by 1910, World War One might not have happened, or might have happened without us. History would have definitely played out differently.
As for the natural gas car explosions, you do know that natural gas would be refined for the purposes of auto fuel to the point that that wouldn't happen don't you?
Well, that sucks. What's the point of fueling a car with NG that you can't kill yourself in by smoking a cigarette?
See, I used to be a loyal Democrat (and still am registered as a Democrat) and the idea that I ever intended to destroy America and the Constitution, and fill mass graves with the body of America's citizens, would certainly have come as news to me.
Really? When I'm feeling mean and nasty I get closer to the truth: the results of Democrat policies only coincidentally resembles a concerted effort to destroy the Constitution and fill mass graves with the bodies of American citizens because they're just that incompetent.
That is way cool! Mind if I do this on my site? With all credit (and a link) to you of course.
Woody-
Sure thing, by all means. The more people that see it the better. I'll link you too. Your Typepad site seems to be down now for some reason, unfortunately, but I'll check back with you later.
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