Opinion Theodore Roosevelt: Big Stick Energy

[Deorum]

Enriching my kids' lives will always be my #1 priority.

Even now that my oldest (25) makes more money than I do after only graduating college three years ago, and my youngest (16) signals heavily that he wants and has the mechanical aptitude to work in the skilled trades... I will always support these boys 100% in whatever they may endeavor to explore.

This country needs fathers, more so now than ever; and I'm raising my sons to fulfill that need and helping them become well-rounded, successful indivduals so that this nation as we know it shall not perish from this earth.

If history isn't going to remember you, make sure your children do (fondly). The inevitable generational fade is a bitch, but at least you've carried out your biological and evolutionary purpose. The shame is when absent deadbeats stop at the effortless act of procreation and don't fill the fully committed role of provider, which extends well beyond mere financial or material needs. The civilizational drag that places on society is deep, which speaks directly to your point.

Of my kids, oldest son is a pure techie who will be going to ASU's Engineering School (aye, excellent), middle daughter is the athlete (starter on the Varsity volleyball team as a freshman this year), youngest son is the innate nature and wildlife aficionado (fittingly, my Jr.). When I'm 40, he'll be rounding 10 -- when memories really begin to crystallize -- and I can hardly contain my excitement. The mere ideas I have in mind are euphoric. And ofc, he's already well aware of why we have America The Beautiful, why our country's greatest natural wonders and wilderness aren't privately owned and inaccessible, why they aren't commercially controlled and plundered.

 

[djacobox372]

TR? LOL.... Fatty

 

[Deorum]

We would need more men like him today, now the west is falling at a fast pace.

He lived from 1858-1919, essentially from the beginning of the Civil War to the end of World War 1. It was an extraordinary historical time period in more ways than you could shake a big stick (or 1895 Winchester at), but so much shit was nonexistent during his run as POTUS from 1901-1909. The federal government wasn't running massive annual deficits, and the national debt now pushing beyond $38 trillion was around $80 billion adjusted for inflation. There was no Federal Reserve, no Military Industrial Complex, no CIA or NSA, no Israel, no 19th Amendment, etc. TR's domestic policy platform was too minimalist for modern society, but it is interesting how each central issue is really no less relevant now than it was then.

 

[HOLA]

The contributions he made to natural history and nature conservation are truly beyond comparison and without equal. You could frame a biographical account of his entire life within the context of those things alone and still have an absolute tome on your hands.



"The President unites in himself qualities that rarely go together. Thus, he has both physical and moral courage in a degree rare in history. He can stand calm and unflinching in the path of a charging grizzly, and he can confront with equal coolness and determination the predacious corporations and money powers of the country. He unites the qualities of the man of action with those of the scholar. He unites great austerity with great good nature. He unites great sensibility with great force and willpower. He loves solitude, and he loves to be in the thick of the fight. He is doubtless the most vital man on the continent, if not on the planet, today." -- John Burroughs ("Oom John"), 1906.




This is easily one of the greatest adventure-horror stories I've ever read, a page-turning masterpiece that was consumed within a few hours -- and it's non-fiction. He saved the best (and by far the worst) for last. An expedition to chart an unmapped river through the world's most notoriously inhospitable and uncompromising jungle of torrential rain, impenetrable vegetation, raging rapids, relentless swarms of disease carrying insects, and cannibalistic indigenous tribes; personally plagued by dysentery, infection, and malaria with the ever-present compounding threats of jaguars, wild pigs, coral snakes, pit vipers, poison dart frogs, anacondas, caimans, piranhas, and all manner of parasites galore.



If Brazil's Foreign Minister Lauro Müller was nervous about Roosevelt’s decision to descend an unmapped river, Henry Fairfield Osborn was thunderstruck. The news, which Frank Chapman delivered to Osborn after receiving a letter from Roosevelt, set off alarm bells at the American Museum of Natural History. Horrified, Osborn immediately sent a blistering message to Roosevelt that he would “never consent to his going to this region under the American Museum flag.” This was not remotely the journey they had agreed on, and Osborn fumed that he “would not even assume part of the responsibility for what might happen in case [Roosevelt] did not return alive.”

Roosevelt’s admission that his new plan was “slightly more hazardous” than the original was, according to Frank Chapman, the understatement of the century. “In a word,” the ornithologist curator later wrote, “it may be said with confidence that in all South America there is not a more difficult or dangerous journey than that down the River of Doubt.” To Osborn, Roosevelt’s decision to descend this river seemed insane if not suicidal, and he ordered Chapman to tell the former president that the American Museum of Natural History expected him to adhere to his original plan.

However, when Chapman’s letter, with all the weight of the museum behind it, reached Brazil, it had less effect than a leaf falling in the rainforest. Having found the challenge he had been yearning for, Roosevelt was beyond the reach of Osborn’s persuasion. In a letter to Chapman, Roosevelt wrote, “Tell Osborn I have already lived and enjoyed as much of life as any nine other men I know; I have had my full share, and if it is necessary for me to leave my bones in South America, I am quite ready to do so.”

Candido Rondon, the Brazilian explorer who was with Roosevelt during his Amazon exploration, recently had a biography published about him. I haven't read it yet but it seems interesting and is getting good reviews:

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[Cole train]

Just ordered first book in edmund morrises teddy trilogy from library

 

[Long Dark Blues]

no CIA or NSA

 

[Rob Battisti]

Just ordered first book in edmund morrises teddy trilogy from library

You’re in for a treat

 

[mozfonky]

He's alright but kind of a huge asshole by today's standards.

as a Native American, I never believed his sentiment really left, it's just more covert which is why I'm watching the goings on in the country whereas I used to be completely disengaged.

 

[Natural Order]

GOAT American?

Hard to argue.

 

[Deorum]

GOAT American?

Hard to argue.

He's finally getting a presidential library.

Just ordered first book in edmund morrises teddy trilogy from library

You’re in for a treat

It's definitely the best and most all-encompassing book to cover his life up to the POTUS years. I was fairly disappointed by the sequel Theodore Rex, not because it was any less informative but simply due to how much conservation policy takes a backseat to not only geopolitics and foreign affairs or the machinations of Capitol Hill and Wall Street but even coal strikes and formal dinners with black guys. An entire fucking book could be written about his Great Western Loop Tour of 1903 alone (and one has been, lol).

This is almost surreal considering Roosevelt is the greatest wilderness advocate in human history bar none. The impression I got from Morris (RIP) was one of a sophisticated scholar who had never rode a horse or hiked a mountain in his life. Thankfully, the massive gaps and blindspots on this front were filled by Douglas Brinkley's The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. It does thorough justice to what is by far his most enduring legacy not only as POTUS but an American.

01. Education of a Darwinian Naturalist
02. Animal Rights and Evolution
03. Of Science, Fish, and Robert B. Roosevelt
04. Harvard and the Northwoods of Maine
05. Midwest Tramping and Conquering of the Matterhorn
06. Chasing Buffalo in the Badlands and Grizzlies in the Bighorns
07. Cradle of Conservation: Elkhorn Ranch of North Dakota
08. Boone & Crockett Club Meets US Biological Survey
09. Laying The Groundwork with John Burroughs
10. Wilderness Hunter in the Electric Age
11. The Bronx Zoo Founder
12. The Rough Rider
13. Higher Political Perches
14. Advocate of the Strenuous Life
15. The Conservationist President
16. The Great Mississippi Bear Hunt
17. Crater Lake and Wind Cave
18. The Feather Wars of Florida
19. Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, and Yosemite
20. Beauty Unmarred
21. Where The Buffalo President Roams
22. The National Monuments of 1906
23. The Prehistoric Sites of 1907
24. The Federal Reservations of 1907-1908
25. The Preservationist Revolution of 1908
26. The Last Bold Steps of 1909

 

[Rob Battisti]

He's finally getting a presidential library.






It's definitely the best and most all-encompassing book to cover his life up to the POTUS years. I was fairly disappointed by the sequel Theodore Rex, not because it was any less informative but simply due to how much conservation policy takes a backseat to not only geopolitics and foreign affairs or the machinations of Capitol Hill and Wall Street but even coal strikes and formal dinners with black guys. An entire fucking book could be written about his Great Western Loop Tour of 1903 alone (and one has been, lol).

This is almost surreal considering Roosevelt is the greatest wilderness advocate in human history bar none. The impression I got from Morris (RIP) was one of a sophisticated scholar who had never rode a horse or hiked a mountain in his life. Thankfully, the massive gaps and blindspots on this front were filled by Douglas Brinkley's The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. It does thorough justice to what is by far his most enduring legacy not only as POTUS but an American.

01. Education of a Darwinian Naturalist
02. Animal Rights and Evolution
03. Of Science, Fish, and Robert B. Roosevelt
04. Harvard and the Northwoods of Maine
05. Midwest Tramping and Conquering of the Matterhorn
06. Chasing Buffalo in the Badlands and Grizzlies in the Bighorns
07. Cradle of Conservation: Elkhorn Ranch of North Dakota
08. Boone & Crockett Club Meets US Biological Survey
09. Laying The Groundwork with John Burroughs
10. Wilderness Hunter in the Electric Age
11. The Bronx Zoo Founder
12. The Rough Rider
13. Higher Political Perches
14. Advocate of the Strenuous Life
15. The Conservationist President
16. The Great Mississippi Bear Hunt
17. Crater Lake and Wind Cave
18. The Feather Wars of Florida
19. Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, and Yosemite
20. Beauty Unmarred
21. Where The Buffalo President Roams
22. The National Monuments of 1906
23. The Prehistoric Sites of 1907
24. The Federal Reservations of 1907-1908
25. The Preservationist Revolution of 1908
26. The Last Bold Steps of 1909

Man — I couldn’t agree more!

We needed a two parter for the POTUS years.

 

[Rob Battisti]

“He was alright” - @Rational Poster

 

[Deorum]

Man — I couldn’t agree more!

We needed a two parter for the POTUS years.

The aforementioned Douglas Brinkley biography fills in the blanks. It will be nothing short of staggering to find out just how perpetually engaged and preoccupied he was at the same time that all of the events Morris writes about in T-Rex were going on. He was covering TR the president, politician, and promoter. To me, he was a fellow American who loved all of the same things I hold dear and launched a revolution for our cause when he seized apex power. My face muscles were legit sore from all the smiling, laughing, and occasional outright howling reading through the book. The TR presidency was a fucking wilderness preservation coup, bro.



President Roosevelt looked back in bafflement over why McKinley had rejected stringent wildlife protection laws. Didn’t McKinley want elk and antelope to populate the Great Plains? Was he really opposed to a moose reserve for Maine? The fact of the matter was that McKinley simply hadn’t wanted to squander political capital with powerful western senators over what he considered fringe issues, such as protecting ungulates. That indifference immediately changed with Roosevelt in power. From the get-go Pinchot, in fact, at Roosevelt’s behest, had brought into the forefront of U.S. conservation policy initiatives which the Boone and Crockett Club had formulated.

Nothing about Roosevelt’s conservationist rhetoric could have been misconstrued as give-and-take. He was telling Congress the new lay of the land. Disgusted that the United States had cut down almost 50 percent of its timber and that valuable topsoil had been washed away, Roosevelt was sending a wake-up call. He wanted Congress to save pristine American land while it still existed. Whether they were coniferous forests in the Pacific Northwest or strands of Douglas fir far older than the republic in the front range of the Rockies, forests had to be saved. His far-reaching conclusion, after much consideration, was that he wanted the western reserves vastly increased.

And the conservationist creed didn’t stop there. It would be up to the federal government—not big business—to lease lands for logging or mining, and not just near the famous destinations like Yellowstone and Yosemite. Throughout the West, the prettiest scenery not deforested or contaminated would be on the table for consideration as national parks or forest reserves. Not on his watch would such lovely Pacific Northwest ranges as the Cascades and Olympics be turned into heaping mounds of slag as in Appalachia. No Western state would go unaffected.

Roosevelt’s address was pure radical Americanism—especially the ten paragraphs dealing directly with conservation. Roosevelt was the new Delphic oracle of conservation, the political authority of the forestry movement, best-selling author, wilderness explorer, hunter, and moral advocate for nature. For most presidents, give-and-take with Congress was important. Roosevelt, however, believed in only one solution: his own.

 

[Rob Battisti]

The aforementioned Douglas Brinkley biography fills in the blanks. It will be nothing short of staggering to find out just how perpetually engaged and preoccupied he was at the same time that all of the events Morris writes about in T-Rex were going on. He was covering TR the president, politician, and promoter. To me, he was a fellow American who loved all of the same things I hold dear and launched a revolution for our cause when he seized apex power. My face muscles were legit sore from all the smiling, laughing, and occasional outright howling reading through the book. The TR presidency was a fucking wilderness preservation coup, bro.



President Roosevelt looked back in bafflement over why McKinley had rejected stringent wildlife protection laws. Didn’t McKinley want elk and antelope to populate the Great Plains? Was he really opposed to a moose reserve for Maine? The fact of the matter was that McKinley simply hadn’t wanted to squander political capital with powerful western senators over what he considered fringe issues, such as protecting ungulates. That indifference immediately changed with Roosevelt in power. From the get-go Pinchot, in fact, at Roosevelt’s behest, had brought into the forefront of U.S. conservation policy initiatives which the Boone and Crockett Club had formulated.

Nothing about Roosevelt’s conservationist rhetoric could have been misconstrued as give-and-take. He was telling Congress the new lay of the land. Disgusted that the United States had cut down almost 50 percent of its timber and that valuable topsoil had been washed away, Roosevelt was sending a wake-up call. He wanted Congress to save pristine American land while it still existed. Whether they were coniferous forests in the Pacific Northwest or strands of Douglas fir far older than the republic in the front range of the Rockies, forests had to be saved. His far-reaching conclusion, after much consideration, was that he wanted the western reserves vastly increased.

And the conservationist creed didn’t stop there. It would be up to the federal government—not big business—to lease lands for logging or mining, and not just near the famous destinations like Yellowstone and Yosemite. Throughout the West, the prettiest scenery not deforested or contaminated would be on the table for consideration as national parks or forest reserves. Not on his watch would such lovely Pacific Northwest ranges as the Cascades and Olympics be turned into heaping mounds of slag as in Appalachia. No Western state would go unaffected.

Roosevelt’s address was pure radical Americanism—especially the ten paragraphs dealing directly with conservation. Roosevelt was the new Delphic oracle of conservation, the political authority of the forestry movement, best-selling author, wilderness explorer, hunter, and moral advocate for nature. For most presidents, give-and-take with Congress was important. Roosevelt, however, believed in only one solution: his own.

Looks like I need to expand my TR biographical intake ASAP

 

[Deorum]

Looks like I need to expand my TR biographical intake ASAP

It was Wilderness Warrior in particular that changed my perception of him from a highly likable, great president well deserving of his place on Mount Rushmore to an outright American hero chiefly responsible for one of the most glorious chapters in the history of the country. Even before ascending to the highest office, his conservation organization was the driving force behind every "achievement" that Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, and William McKinley signed into law.

The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 (giving the POTUS unilateral power to declare them, heheh), the Yellowstone Protection Act of 1894 (foundation and enforcement mechanism for all future national park protection laws), the Lacey Act of 1900 (which criminalized and all but brought an end to the commercial market hunting that was rapidly wiping out American wildlife). Those were Boone and Crockett initiatives. John Lacey was a member of B&C. The first (and second) directors of the NPS were members of B&C, lol. Teddy didn't create the NPS; he's the reason there was a necessity for it at all.

There is almost nowhere wonderful in the Great American West that can be enjoyed or explored where his impact goes unfelt if you know the score and history. It's a legacy that has endured and persisted into the present day, right up to Bitched Mike Lee catching a beatdown for his public lands sell-off proposal this summer. It's what happens when you actually have a man who acts independently, on his own volition and principles. The same type of dude that delivers an 84-minute speech after getting shot in the chest or leaps at the chance for an expedition to chart an unmapped river in the most treacherous wilderness on the planet at 55 years old.

And River of Doubt really is quite fun, probably my second fave despite being entirely focused on a single adventure and time period. Rise by Morris rounds out the top three. How the fuck is this even real?

 

[Deorum]

The essential American project should be to restore mega-herds of bison. They should cover entire counties. The earth should shake several states away.

 

[Fox by the Sea]

 

[Sinister]

Just a sidenote. I recently did that thread about corruption. Teddy was one of the earlier politicians to call for campaign finance reform, which led to the Tillman Act:

 

[Deorum]

TR would hate what I just said.

This fired me up!

Just a sidenote. I recently did that thread about corruption. Teddy was one of the earlier politicians to call for campaign finance reform, which led to the Tillman Act:

Independent Bull Moose Platform (1912).