President Theodore Roosevelt understood the need to regulate big business and protect the public welfare from the greed of the marketplace. My question is where are the Teddy Roosevelt Republicans of today ? Our country could definitely use a few of them right now.
Thanks to the Rev. Bill McGinnis for calling my attention to this great quote from Teddy Roosevelt:
"I hold that a corporation does ill if it seeks profit in restricting production and then by extorting high prices from the community by reason of the scarcity of the product; through adulterating, lyingly advertising, or over-driving the help; or replacing men workers with children; or by rebates; or in any illegal or improper manner driving competitors out of its way; or seeking to achieve monopoly by illegal or unethical treatment of its competitors, or in any shape or way offending against the moral law either in connection with the public or with its employees or with its rivals. Any corporation which seeks its profit in such fashion is acting badly. It is, in fact, a conspiracy against the public welfare which the Government should use all its powers to suppress.
"If, on the other hand, a corporation seeks profit solely by increasing its products through eliminating waste, improving its processes, utilizing its by-products, installing better machines, raising wages in the effort to secure more efficient help, introducing the principle of cooperation and mutual benefit, dealing fairly with labor unions, setting its face against the underpayment of women and the employment of children; in a word, treating the public fairly and its rivals fairly: then such a corporation is behaving well. It is an instrumentality of civilization operating to promote abundance by cheapening the cost of living so as to improve conditions everywhere throughout the whole community."
Source: Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt
http://patriot.net/~bmcgin/capitalismanddemocracy.html
3 comments:
I have been hoping for years to read a proper study of the two Presidents Roosevelt in terms of their similarities, preferably leading to a synthesis of their thought as applicable in the present age. If anyone knows of such a work, then do please let me know.
The rural and Western half of the Republican Party supported the New Deal. Congressional Republicans (not all, but some) cast the votes that passed Civil Rights in the face of Dixiecrat resistance. Their party historically and rightly viewed the wider world in strictly realistic terms, "not seeking for monsters to destroy". Republicans called for Europe to revert to pre-1914 borders and thus end the First World War, an outcome (also advocated by Pope Benedict XV) which would have precluded both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Theirs was the party of Eisenhower, with his even-handed approach to Israel and the Palestinians, and with his denunciation of the military-industrial complex. The party of Nixon, who ended the Vietnam War as President Obama will end the Iraq War, and who began détente with China as President Obama is beginning détente with Iran (and beyond). And the party of opposition to Clinton’s unpatriotic job-exportation, unpatriotic sweatshop-importation, and unpatriotic global trigger-happiness, all continued and expanded by the unpatriotic Bush Administration.
But where is it now?
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I am proud you are still pushing the Populist Agenda. I consider myself to be a Teddy Roosevelt Republican myself. I have found that there are many of us in the GOP but the rulers of our party are not friendly to that old fashioned Populist Conservative form of the movement. So we have very little influence right now.
For some reason the GOP has become a Party of 1% (Rich) instead of 100% America First. Here in Northeast Mississippi, we are socially conservative and economically populist. Everyone is fed up with our "Mississippi Conservative Governor" voting against a bill that would have cut taxes for furniture factory workers. And we remain stead fast against Barack Obama because he is so far to the left.
Personally I think people need to stop looking at the party and start looking at the person. We need a Populist Conservatives like Teddy Roosevelt in every single office in our federal, state, and local governments because only they will push an America First / Majoriy First Agenda.
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