Saturday, December 27, 2008

Take that, Teddy!

Mussing up the neocon icon:
The fact that conservative politicians such as John McCain and writers like William Kristol and Karl Rove are attracted to our 26th president [Teddy Roosevelt] is strange because, if we want to understand where in the American political tradition the idea of unlimited, redistributive government came from, we need look no further than to Roosevelt and others who shared his outlook.
Read the whole thing. There is significance in the mere fact that the Wall Street Journal would rebuke the "national greatness" crowd by publishing this critique of their hero.

2 comments:

  1. Teddy is the father of ugly precedent.
    Regardless of soft spokenness or big stickery, the real metric needs to be Constitutional fidelity.

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  2. John McCain et al conservative? Surely you jest. As far as TR goes, he was a progressive. In fact, FDR did not invent " The Deal". TR did. The Square Deal. I love TR as a person, and even some of his progressive policies and beliefs like national parks, and voting rights for women, but on economics, he was wrong. What people like about TR was that he had balls and he walked the walk, which is a fine thing, but his economic policies were wrong.

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