I’ve just finished reading, “The Imperial Cruise” by James Bradley. I was shocked at how TR was represented!!! I was looking into the net to see what else was being said about TR and found lots of the same as Bradley said.

As for Mark Twain being an activist for little furry critters and an anti-TR reporter and and anti-Philippines reporter, I again was shocked!!

On the other hand, I saw how Bradley re-wrote history about the Pacific war so I quess I shouldn’t be too shocked.

So, where is all this anti-TR coming from ????? Why now?

Submitted to your personal historical/judicial scales:
“There are good men and bad men of all nationalities, creeds and colors; and if this world of ours is ever to become what we hope some day it may become, it must be by the general recognition that the man’s heart and soul, the man’s worth and actions, determine his standing.”
Letter, Oyster Bay, NY, September 1, 1903

Do you figure it’s best to attempt to raze key figures with plenty of positive contributions because they weren’t a 2010 “progressive” (a very debateable term btw)?

Someday, you may learn to appreciate historical/societal context and learn to, at least in part, frame your assessment with that perspective.

We need more TRs & less of the pusillanimous, armchair quarterbacks of acadaemia.

Teddy Roosevelt? Cool? He was fascinated with war. He was an imperialist, like today’s Democrats and Republicans, who enjoyed fighting in pointless wars, and he was responsible for the origins of this enormous welfare-warfare state. He thought it was the USA’s responsibility to bring foreign nations to democracy and Christianity. He was a self-described Hamiltonian, who supported a large, growing centralized government, again, like today’s Democrats and Republicans. He was a tool of the Morgan wing of the Republican Party (one of his first acts as president was even throwing a lavish dinner in honor of JP Morgan) and signed a number of destructive, inane, mercantilist regulatory acts in their favor, and implemented disastrous price controls which led to the eventual federal takeover of railways. He was a racist and championed eugenics. He considered American Indians, Mexicans, and blacks to be inferior to whites. He was a protectionist. He was anti-immigration. He epitomizes what both parties today stand for — but I suppose that’s why he’s deemed “cool.”

Nor does anybody seem to ever mention that he was a white supremicist:

“The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him. …[I]t is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races.”
– Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West: Book IV (1896)

Yep. That’s Bull Moose BAMF Teddy Roosevelt for ya. I find it strange that those who write history so often ignore it.