The August Day Plutocracy Would Love Us To Forget

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.truth-out.org/the-august-day-plutocracy-would-love-us-to-forget62841

Ex-Presidents almost always follow a small number of well-worn scripts. Some rush to cash in on their celebrity. Some do charitable good deeds. Some just lay low.

Exactly one century ago, on August 31, 1910, we had an ex-President who took a brash and bold leap that took him far beyond these narrowly circumscribed roles. On that day, in the middle of Middle America, a former President — Theodore Roosevelt — essentially called on his fellow citizens to smash the nation’s rich down to democratic size.

We need, Roosevelt told a massive assembly of 30,000 listeners, to “destroy privilege.” Ruin for our democracy, he warned, will be “inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few.”

Those listeners — in Osawatomie, Kansas — roared their approval. Back East, apologists for grand fortune would be aghast. Editorial writers would label Roosevelt “frankly socialistic,” even “anarchistic.” A later historian, George Mowry, would call TR’s talk, soon to be known as his “New Nationalism” address, ”the most radical speech ever given by an ex-President.”

Time hasn’t dimmed that radicalism. Indeed, TR’s speech speaks powerfully to us today, mainly because we confront, a hundred years after he spoke in Osawatomie, the same concentrated wealth and power that TR so feared.


MORE at the link ---

[laughingliberal]

1. K & R nt

[blue sky at night]

2. how shall I say this?

Learn it, Know it....Live it, Barack Obama.

[proteus_lives]

3. TR was true progressive.

He saw the future and danger of corporations and Wall street.

Abe, FDR and TR are my favorite presidents.

[xchrom]

4. Not in any sense that we understand it in the post Reagan era

But TR was a Conservative.

He had a Notion of American life
And that it should be preserved.

Neither political party would like TR today.

[Caliman73]

5. I agree with your statement in the most part.

TR was both. He did not fit neatly into one camp.He was jingoistic, thinking that Americans had the right and obligation to promote their interests around the world. He was also pro-union and anti-trust. He hated the idea of the moneyed few dictating life to others. Democrats would dislike him because he advocated militarism. Republicans would dislike him because he advocated progressive regulation of industry.

He was certainly an interesting person.

[proteus_lives]

6. If you haven't already, read The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex

By Morris.

He was an American original.

Republicans would also hate him for his profound respect (almost worship) of the environment.

[xchrom]

7. I don't disagree with that characterization. Nt

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

8. *Goes to link* *checks author* REC!