Profiles in Toxic Masculinity, Part 16 – Theodore Roosevelt
Appearances Can Be Deceiving
See this old photo of the young lad to the right? Looks like a child from a time when medical care wasn’t all it would later become; a child of the late nineteenth century, a pale, slight, weak child, with the pallor of asthma and an aura of failure to thrive. But that weak and sickly child – for that is indeed what he was – is the young Theodore Roosevelt, who would grow to become a rancher, a Colonel of Volunteers in the US Army, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of New York, President of the New York City Board of Police Commissioners, Vice President and then President of the United States, a hurricane who walked like a man, a major-league badass no matter what you think of his politics, and the latest subject of our Profiles in Toxic Masculinity.
His Maculate Origin
Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City on October 27, 1858. His father, Theodore Roosevelt Senior, was a businessman, primarily involved in a plate glass importing business, Roosevelt & Son. His mother, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, was a socialite and a true southern belle, having been raised in antebellum Georgia and reportedly one of Margaret Mitchell’s inspirations for the character of Scarlett O’Hara.
The young Roosevelt was, as noted, a weak, sickly child. He suffered from severe asthma attacks, often at night, which terrified him with the sensation of being suffocated. Then, in 1869, his family vacationed in Europe. While hiking in the Alps, young Theodore discovered that, as he exerted himself, he gained strength, eventually keeping pace with this father. This was the genesis of his “Strenuous Life” recipe for health. At this point young Theodore physically tore the asthma from his body, pinned it to the ground and choked it to death, thus ending the ‘weak and sickly’ phase of his life and becoming entirely something else.
His Adventurous Career
Being the product of homeschooling, not unusual among the wealthy families of that age, didn’t hinder young Roosevelt in pursuing a varied career. He proved to have a talent for geography and history, which would serve him well later in life, and did well in the sciences, particularly biology, which kindled in young Roosevelt an appreciation for the natural world that he would retain for the rest of his days. His educational preparation allowed him into Harvard, where he was on rowing and boxing teams, presumably kicking ass at that latter. Roosevelt also was an editor of The Harvard Advocate, the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and the Porcellian Club, whatever that was. With all this, Roosevelt still graduated in 1880, 22nd of 177 in his class.
Theodore Roosevelt the elder had died in 1878, leaving young Theodore with an impressive inheritance of $65,000 – almost two million in 2023 dollars. This would have left Theodore the younger with enough resources to live a life of leisure, but leisure was not in his nature. He entered Columbia Law School but found that the law was indeed an ass, and neglected his studies to write his first book, The Naval War of 1812, published in 1882. It was in this interval that Roosevelt married his first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee. Four years later Alice presented Roosevelt with a daughter, Alice Lee Roosevelt, then the young mother died two days later of kidney failure. Roosevelt was struck so hard by the loss that he was, for a time, unable to care for his infant daughter, leaving her in the care of his sister, and never spoke or wrote of his first wife again.
But it didn’t take him long to overcome his grief and return to his accustomed badassery.
In 1885, having found serving in the New York State Assembly boring, young Roosevelt, then twenty-seven years of age, abandoned his comfortable New York lifestyle and proceeded hither to the Dakota Territory, where he founded the Elkhorn Ranch. Roosevelt quickly became adept at the skills necessary for cattle ranching in the West: Riding, roping, shooting, hunting, and generally impressing the older, more experienced cowboys he hired, some of whom would later serve with Roosevelt in a more uniform capacity. He wrote later of his time in Dakota that he admired cattlemen, noting that they had “few of the emasculated, milk-and-water moralities admired by the pseudo-philanthropists; but he does possess, to a very high degree, the stern, manly qualities that are invaluable to a nation.”
As though running a ranch and transforming himself into a ridin’, ropin’, shootin’ man of action wasn’t enough, during this interval Roosevelt also wrote three books on hunting and ranch life, helped form the Little Missouri Stockmen’s Association and the Boone and Crockett Club, along with serving as a Deputy Sheriff of Billings County.
Unfortunately not even young Theodore Roosevelt could command the weather. He was wiped out in the winter of 1886-1887 and returned to New York, where he married his second wife, Edith Kermit Carow. In addition to raising Roosevelt’s daughter Alice, the couple would have five children: Theodore Roosevelt III (1887), who became a badass in his own right, serving in the Army during the Great War and winning the Medal of Honor for directing troops at Utah Beach on June 6th, 1944. Ted was followed by Kermit (1889), Ethel (1891) Archibald (1894), and Quentin (1897).
While engaged in the production of offspring with Mrs. Roosevelt, Theodore was also adding to his list of offices, serving on the Civil Service Commission, as New York City Police Commissioner, and finally as Assistant Secretary of the Navy (a post that would later be held by his son Ted). It was in this latter role that Theodore Roosevelt would cement his reputation as a badass, following the explosion of the armored cruiser Maine in Havana harbor in 1898.
His One-Man War
When President William McKinley asked for and received a declaration of war against Spain, Theodore Roosevelt, against his wife’s express wishes, resigned his post as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. With Army Colonel Leonard Wood, he formed the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, who would later famously be named ‘The Rough Riders.’
Roosevelt recruited quite a mixed bag for the Rough Riders: Ivy League athletes, cowboys, Indians, prospectors, frontier lawmen and former soldiers – anyone Roosevelt felt was tough enough and could ride and shoot straight. After training, the regiment deployed to Cuba.
Roosevelt was originally commissioned as a Lieutenant Colonel and made second-in-command. Eventually Colonel Wood was promoted to command of the brigade, whereupon Roosevelt was promoted to Colonel – a title he would prefer to the end of his days – and given command of the regiment. After a minor scrap with the Spaniard at Las Guasimas, the Rough Riders gained their fame on July 1, 1898, when they were part of the American assault on the San Juan Heights.
That morning Roosevelt, without orders, decided to assault Kettle Hill. In spite of the Rough Riders being a cavalry regiment, Roosevelt was the only man on horseback that day, riding back and forth between firing positions, keeping the men moving, shouting encouragement. Near the crest of the hill his horse became entangled in barbed wire, and so the Colonel walked the rest of the way to the summit with his men. One American sergeant later commented of Roosevelt that “…wherever the bullets was thickest, there was the Colonel, his revolver in one hand, always yelling ‘follow me, boys!’ and leading the charge.” Roosevelt thereafter referred to the charge on Kettle Hill as “my crowded hour,” perhaps referencing Sir Walter Scott: “One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name.” It is nevertheless important to note that this crowded hour cost four hundred men killed and almost a thousand wounded.
Colonel Roosevelt was recommended for the Medal of Honor for that day, but the Army suppressed the award due to Roosevelt’s unfortunate tendency toward braggadocio; he was however posthumously awarded the Medal in 2001. Theodore Roosevelt thus became the only American President to be awarded the Medal of Honor, although it happened years after his death. Apparently, courage can be passed on, as his son Ted was also awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions at Utah Beach in 1944.
His Presidency
After the war Roosevelt was elected Governor of New York, a position he held for two years before winning election in the 1900 Presidential contest as Vice President to William McKinley. He ascended to the Presidency in September of 1901 following the assassination of President McKinley by an anarchist named Leon Czolgosz. Roosevelt was the 26th man to hold the office of President.
Once seizing the reins of power, now-President Roosevelt made ample use of them. Whereas his three predecessors had only filed eighteen antitrust violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act among them, Roosevelt filed forty-four. He oversaw the creation of the extra-constitutional agency United States Department of Commerce and Labor, including the Bureau of Corporations that would later become the Federal Trade Commission. The Department of Commerce and Labor would eventually give way to two agencies, the Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor, which are still not authorized in the Constitution but somehow manage to exist anyway. Roosevelt also established the US Forest Service and signed a law creating the first national parks. He made ample use of executive orders to set aside forest reserves, prohibiting development of those lands, until an amendment to an agricultural appropriations bill passed by Congress forbade him doing so; even so, he signed 21 additional reserves into being after Congress passed the bill and before signing it into law.
In foreign policy, Roosevelt adhered to the famous principle of the big stick. He sent the Great White Fleet on a world tour, put down an insurrection in the Philippines (the one given apocryphal credit for the US Army’s adoption of the 1911 Colt .45 caliber sidearm) and negotiated an end to the Russo-Japanese War, which resulted in his being presented with the Nobel Peace Prize. German and British interference in South and Central America led Roosevelt to issue an amendment to the Monroe Doctrine, which stated “Chronic wrongdoing or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere, the adherence of the United States to the Monroe doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.”
In between all this he negotiated with (read that as “intimidated”) the Columbian government into surrendering to the U.S. what would become the Panama Canal Zone, and to push through the construction of that work of engineering, which would forever change the face of international shipping.
It was during that last project was ongoing that Roosevelt became the first U.S. President to leave the continental United States while in office, when he embarked on a tour of the Canal Zone with a side jaunt to Puerto Rico.
In 1904, Roosevelt handily won the Presidential election in his own right.
Roosevelt, unfortunately, moved to the left in his second term. He called for new policies including an income tax, an inheritance tax, and repeatedly denounced what he called “predatory wealth.” Maybe because of this, as his second term drew to a close, he lost support of enough of the Republican base that he did not seek a third term, allowing his Vice President William Howard Taft, he of the impressive heft, to run for and win the Presidency in 1908.
His Golden Years
Retirement did not sit easily on Theodore Roosevelt.
Shortly after handing over the White House to William Howard Taft, Roosevelt went hither to Africa as part of the Smithsonian-Roosevelt Africa Expedition, his purpose being to gather zoological specimens for several museums. He immortalized this trip in his book African Game Trails.
The safari covered a large part of the continent and killed or trapped over eleven thousand animals, ranging from insects to elephants, all of which were sent to the Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History in New York for display. After the safari, Roosevelt proceeded to Europe, there to jaw with (among others) Kaiser Wilhelm II, King George V, and Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary. He capped this in 1910 be becoming the first U.S. President to fly in an airplane.
By 1912, Roosevelt had grown dismayed that William Howard Taft had not proved to be an ideological clone of Roosevelt, and so challenged him for the Presidency. When Taft won the Republican nomination Roosevelt formed his own “Progressive” party and ran as a… fourth party candidate against Taft, Democrat Woodrow Wilson and Socialist Eugene Debs. This led to the disastrous Wilson being elected as the 28th President.
But it was during this campaign that Roosevelt was offered one more opportunity to demonstrate his personal fortitude. In October of 1912 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, just before a scheduled speech, Roosevelt was shot from seven feet away by a lunatic named John Schrank, who claimed the ghost of William McKinley commanded him to do so. The bullet, partly deflected by a printed copy of his speech and a steel eyeglass case, entered Roosevelt’s chest. After ordering police to take custody of Schrank, Roosevelt conducted a calm self-assessment, noted that he was bleeding from the chest but not from the nose or mouth. Correctly assuming he was not mortally wounded, he went on to deliver remarks for 90 minutes, bleeding from the chest the entire time. He prefaced his remarks be noting “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”
After failing of election, Roosevelt went on to attack Wilson’s administration at every turn and in so doing may have helped the Republicans take control of Congress in 1918. When the Great War erupted Roosevelt supported American involvement and offered to re-form the Rough Riders for the occasion, which offer was declined by Wilson. But as 1918 rolled into 1919, Roosevelts’ health deteriorated, the result of several tropical diseases caught in Africa and a later trip to the Amazon. The hurricane who walked like a man suffered breathing trouble on the night of January 5th, 1919, and after asking his family servant to “Please put out that light, James,” Theodore Roosevelt passed away.
His son Archibald telegraphed friends and supporters with the message, “the old lion is dead.” Even Woodrow Wilson’s Vice President, Thomas Marshall, commented that “Death had to take Theodore Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight.”
In Summary
It’s hard to reduce a man like Theodore Roosevelt to a few pages.
I’m sure I left out a hell of a lot of interesting information. Many books have been written about Colonel Roosevelt; I’ve read a bunch of them, he being one of my personal heroes. Anyone interested in learning more about his influence on American history would be well advised to do likewise.
I feel the need to point out that I’m not altogether a fan of Theodore Roosevelt’s political views. He was certainly no libertarian, favoring government regulation of business and making much of his reputation as a “Trust Buster.” But differing with those views does not mean I cannot recognize the greatness of the man overall. He had courage, fortitude, intelligence and grit, attributes unknown among politicians in today’s world. We could use a few more like him, as examples if nothing else.
Theodore Roosevelt’s impressive bibliography follows:
- The Naval War of 1812, Part I. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1882.
- The Naval War of 1812, Part II. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1882.
- Hunting Trips of a Ranchman. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1885.
- Thomas H. Benton. American Statesmen. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. 1886.
- Essays on Practical Politics. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1888.
- Gouverneur Morris: The Study of His Life and Work. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. 1888.
- Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail. New York: The Century Company. 1888.
- The Winning of the West, Volume I: From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1889.
- The Winning of the West, Volume II: In the Current of the Revolution. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1889.
- New York. Historic Towns. London: Longman’s, Green, and Co. 1891.
- The Wilderness Hunter. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1893.
- American Big Game Hunting. New York: Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 1893. (with George Bird Grinnell)
- The Winning of the West, Volume III: The War in the Northwest. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1894.
- Hero Tales from American History. New York: The Century Company. 1895. (with Henry Cabot Lodge)
- Hunting in Many Lands. New York: Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 1895. (with George Bird Grinnell)
- The Winning of the West, Volume IV. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1896.
- American Ideals. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1897.
- Trail and Campfire. New York: Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 1897. (with George Bird Grinnell)
- Some American Game. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1897.
- American Naval Policy: As Outlined in the Messages of the Presidents of the United States. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. 1897.
- The Rough Riders. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1899.
- The Strenuous Life. New York: The Century Company. 1899.
- Oliver Cromwell. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1900.
- The Naval Operations of the War between Great Britain and the United States, 1812–1815. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1901.
- The Deer Family. New York: The MacMillan Company. 1902. (with T. S. Van Dyke, D. G. Elliot, and A. J. Stone)
- Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1905.
- Good Hunting: In Pursuit of Big Game in the West. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers. 1907.
- Outlook Editorials. New York: The Outlook Company. 1909.
- African and European Addresses. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1910.
- African Game Trails. London: John Murray, Albemar Street. 1910.
- American Problems. New York: The Outlook Company. 1910.
- The New Nationalism. New York: The Outlook Company. 1910.
- The Conservation of Womanhood and Childhood. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company. 1912.
- Realizable Ideals: Earl Lectures of Pacific Theological Seminary. San Francisco: Whitaker & Ray-iggin Co. 1912.
- Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography. New York: The MacMillan Company. 1913.
- History as Literature and Other Essays. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1913.
- Progressive Principles. New York: Progressive National Service. 1913.
- Through the Brazilian Wilderness. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1914.
- Life-Histories of African Game Animals, Volume I. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1914. (with Edmund Heller)
- Life-Histories of African Game Animals, Volume II. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1914. (with Edmund Heller)
- America and the World War. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1915.
- Fear God and Take Your Own Part. New York: George H. Dornan Company. 1916.
- A Book Lover’s Holidays in the Open. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1916.
- The Foes of Our Own Household. New York: George H. Doran Company. 1917.
- National Strength and International Duty. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1917.
- The Great Adventure: Present-Day Studies in American Nationalism. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1918.
- Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1919.
Yeah, I have a few problems with Teddy.
I have problems with his politics. But I admire the man for his fortitude and his forthrightness.
I can admire the man, and hate the politics, but he did a lot of damage and opened the door to more extra Constitutional agencies.
That door had been open since 1860.
yup: one must destroy the Constitution to save it
It seems to me that a complicated, multi-faceted fellow like that is a product of a bygone era now. But I wonder if that’s due to A) romanticizing the past and the dead, such that we view a character like Roosevelt with rose colored glasses; B) the change in culture and politics, such that we villainize or lionize a man’s personal characteristics as they correspond to our agreement with his politics; or C) a genuine change in society whereby politics and character have actually become inseparable and less personal variability is tolerated. I genuinely can’t think of a single modern public figure who advocates progressive politics who has even one personal quality I admire, or at least could conceive of as being admirable, but perhaps that’s due to me being a product of B).
In any case, I wish had the drive, ambition, fortitude, and resilience of a Teddy Roosevelt, although I can’t help but wonder if society would have been the better for it if he hadn’t.
A bunch of the beasts bagged by TR supposedly make up the decor over the bar at the Old Ebbitt Grill, a DC institution (try the oysters!)
Roosevelt also related a very good bigfoot story:
https://youtu.be/xpt0f3DmDGg
OMG *faints*
“LOL LOL: Ninth Circuit Orders Stormy Daniels to Pay Trump Additional $121,973
It’s been a really depressing day for America, and you deserve a laugh, so here it is. On the very same day that Soros-backed Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was busy torching American civil norms, the notoriously left-leaning Ninth District Court of Appeals ordered the annoying skank who started this whole mess to pay Donald Trump $121,972.56 in addition to the half a million dollars she already owes him.”
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2023/04/04/lol-lol-ninth-circuit-orders-stormy-daniels-to-pay-trump-additional-121973-n1684520
Thank god. Please enjoy this audiovisual representation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19oUVarhM4Y
https://media.tenor.com/1DpOi9opwz4AAAAd/trump-tank.gif
I was sad to learn that the famous pic of him riding a moose was photoshopped steam punk style:
https://allthatsinteresting.com/teddy-roosevelt-riding-moose
Whatever his faults, he went into battle at the age of 40 even though he was fat, had asthma, and wore glasses. Later, he finished giving a speech after getting shot in the chest.
Despite not speaking a single word of Japanese or Russian, he successfully negotiated a peace treaty between the 2 empires, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Truly, he was the Chuck Norris of the early 20th century.
And such a great orator too. Listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhlzdjPGxrs
What a curious accent. It sounds like that fake hoity-toity accent all of Hollywood had during the early 20th century.
He grew up rich in NY, then spent a few years living as a cowboy. He was inspired to start the National Park System after seeing the badlands of North Dakota. His mom and wife died the same year when he was 24 and he went out west on a hunting trip to decompress. When he saw all the construction, he became worried that soon there would be no wild places left. I stood at the spot in North Dakota where he had those thoughts. There is a marker there.
/creates new entry on my “things to see on your next cross country drive”
I had never heard his voice until now. It does seem a bit incongruous with his physical appearance, and may knock off a couple notches of badassery. He sounds like the kind of guy an average joe could take in a fight.
IIRC, it’s called “mid-Atlantic” accent and was a cultured thing, much like “Received Pronunciation” in Britain.
On the same subject. George Patton sounded nothing like George C Scott. He had a remarkedly high pitched voice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9DpKDwCJcM
Think about the Bald Eagle. Look like Chuck Norris and sounds like Jerry Lewis.
Lol, that one I knew because of how much WWII footage one gets exposed to as a growing boy. They should AI overdub George C Scott’s voice on all of Patton’s actual speeches.
You will NOT sully my memories of George C. Scott!!! Er, General Patton!!!
“Bully!”
Hihn was no TR
40 isn’t old, looking at photos from the rough rider years he isn’t fat (stocky at worst), asthma and glasses aren’t necessarily debilitating conditions, I’m sure he had translators. I’ll give you the shot in the chest thing.
Call me a pajama wearing soy boy but the older I get the less impressed I am with people just because they are ‘Badass’.
Yer a pajama wearing soy boy.
You’re a boy wearing soy pajama
Step off. His ass is mine.
Wild Wild Life
Talking Heads
I’m wearing-a fur pajamas
I ride a hot potato
It’s tickling my fancy
Speak up, I can’t hear you
Here on this mountaintop, oh-oh-oh
I got some wild, wild life
I got some news to tell you, oh-oh
About some wild, wild life
Here come the doctor in charge, oh-oh-oh
She’s got some wild, wild life
Ain’t that the way you like it, oh-oh?
Living wild, wild life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=616-QGQyx-I&ab_channel=TalkingHeads
+1
Aren’t they rereleasing or rebooting or whatever the concert Stop Making Sense?
I could have sworn I saw that announcement somewhere.
Socrates was 60 the 1st time he went into battle. An eyewitness observed:
***
Furthermore, men, it was worthwhile to behold Socrates when the army retreated in flight from Delium; for I happened to be there on horseback and he was a hoplite. The soldiers were then in rout, and while he and Laches were retreating together, I came upon them by chance. And as soon as I saw them, I at once urged the two of them to take heart, and I said I would not leave them behind. I had an even finer opportunity to observe Socrates there than I had had at Potidaea, for I was less in fear because I was on horseback. First of all, how much more sensible he was than Laches; and secondly, it was my opinion, Aristophanes (and this point is yours); that walking there just as he does here in Athens, ‘stalking like a pelican, his eyes darting from side to side,’ quietly on the lookout for friends and foes, he made it plain to everyone even at a great distance that if one touches this real man, he will defend himself vigorously. Consequently, he went away safely, both he and his comrade; for when you behave in war as he did, then they just about do not even touch you; instead they pursue those who turn in headlong flight.[3]
***
Genghis Khan was about 40 when he defeated his childhood friend Jamuka . It was Khan’s 1st major battle. On the 1st night, he told his men to light 10,000 campfires. Then 5,000 the 2nd night. Then 1,000 the 3rd night. Upon watching this, Jamuka said: Ha! His men are cowards!
During the battle, Jamuka was betrayed, and he and the traitors were executed in the traditional Mongol style: rolled up in a carpet and trampled by horses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTzhD_bHF7k
Classics are classics for a reason.
This probably belongs with the afternoon links, but I was busy spending the day at the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. You won’t believe what I saw. They actually said that they could determine if a skeleton is a man or a woman. I’m literally shaking, and it ain’t from the bootleg mezcal I bought. Cancel Mexico!
Climate Change is Real, Say Those Who Think Gender is a Social Construct
Gender is a social construct (it’s sex that isn’t) and climate change is bullshit.
Only if you cap the historical etymology of the term at 50 years ago.
According to a book I just read you can’t tell an ape’s skeleton from a human one, so I’m going to call bullshit.
I recently learned that big and small prehistoric horses lived together at the same time. The famous diagram of horse evolution is wrong. Science marches on.
The famous diagrams of the evolution of just about every species, including the ape>caveman>hunter-gatherer>suit-and-necktie one that’s still in grade school biology books, are utter and complete fabrications, or simplifications if you prefer. Which wouldn’t be any big deal, as science books are full of such simplifications and analogies, except that gradualism is taught more like religious dogma, and you can’t even discuss things like punctuated equilibrium or catastrophism until you get into university without being berated as a religious nutter or crackpot.
Evolution is a long process, and so the teaching of it must be likewise. I like this site a lot:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
I re-read The Origin of Species 2 years ago. My favorite tidbit was that the sum of an arthropod’s legs and mouth parts is the same for all species. Also, everything keeps evolving into crabs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvfR3XLXPvw
Still, there’s a lot of stupid shit in elementary biology textbooks that’s been controverted or even deprecated for the better part of a century that’s still taught as if it were unquestioned fact, in at least some part because science teachers are more interested in deconstructing religious orthodoxy than teaching factual science. And that sucks.
Yeah. It’s always amusing when people mistake me for a young earth creationist when I’ve forgotten more about natural history than they’ll ever know.
Herp derp. Not a liberal? Must be a creationist, herp derp.
Humans and chimps share 98% of DNA!
To make it worse they only mentioned male and female. What about the other 57 flavors?
Teddy is my 2nd favorite president. #1 is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WBZHoh_zuU
Bro, do you even libertarian?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwZnExRb8zU
Cal can be #2. Hard not to pick WHH as #1.
Old Tippecanoe was always my fave, wish more presidents would emulate WHH
Atchison, the guy who might have been president for a day:
***
Inauguration Day—March 4—fell on a Sunday in 1849, and so president-elect Zachary Taylor did not take the presidential oath of office until the next day. Even so, the term of the outgoing president, James K. Polk, ended at noon on March 4. On March 2, outgoing vice president George M. Dallas relinquished his position as president of the Senate. Congress had previously chosen Atchison as president pro tempore. In 1849, according to the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, the Senate president pro tempore immediately followed the vice president in the presidential line of succession. As Dallas’s term also ended at noon on the 4th, and as neither Taylor nor vice president-elect Millard Fillmore had been sworn in to office on that day, it was claimed by some of Atchison’s friends and colleagues that on March 4–5, 1849, Atchison was acting president of the United States.[21][22]
Historians, constitutional scholars and biographers all dismiss the claim. They point out that Atchison’s Senate term had also ended on March 4.[3] When the Senate of the new Congress convened on March 5 to allow new senators and the new vice president to take the oath of office, the secretary of the Senate called members to order, as the Senate had no president pro tempore.[21] Although an incoming president must take the oath of office before any official acts, the prevailing view is that presidential succession does not depend on the oath.[3] Even supposing that an oath were necessary, Atchison never took it, so he was no more the president than Taylor.[3]
***
My favorite Coolidge story:
***
While advancing in local politics, Coolidge married Grace Anna Goodhue on October 4, 1905. The two were wed at her parent’s home in Burlington, Vermont. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Vermont, she was a teacher at the Clarke Institute for the Deaf in Northampton. Coolidge first caught her eye one morning when she saw him through the open window of his boardinghouse in Northampton, standing in his underwear and wearing a hat while shaving. She thought that he looked ridiculous, laughed loud enough for him to notice her, and then turned away. He later said that he was wearing the hat to keep his uncombed hair out of his eyes while shaving. His marriage proposal in the summer of 1905 came in the form of a romantic prophecy: “I am going to be married to you.” Grace loved the silent but blunt young lawyer and immediately consented. A son, John, was born in 1906; Calvin, Jr. followed in 1908.
***
https://millercenter.org/president/coolidge/life-before-the-presidency
I can’t even with you people:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbRom1Rz8OA
OG lost 20% of his men during the winter at Valley Forge. 10 days later, the Army won a great battle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOJCmPKaYN8
He save children, but not the British children…
Best part of the song.
Slumbrew gets it. George had two sets of testicles!
Teddy has become a complicated figure for me. I read a StepUp Books “Meet Teddy Roosevelt” biography of him when I was a kid and he became a personal hero. I loved how he overcame every obstacle in his life with boundless energy and optimism. It didn’t occur to me until my early thirties that his politics weren’t so compatible with mine. Now I wonder if maybe he was a masculine equivalent of Leslie Knope. As has been pointed out above I guess at this point I admire the man even if he was a progressive forerunner who was on net bad for the country. For what it’s worth I love his writing on all things hunting and fishing.
I was also affected by how marked with tragedy his life was. The idea of his mother and wife dying in the same week and what that must have felt like, as well as him finally dying of a broken heart when his son was killed in WWI still tugs at the old heart strings
Wife and mother died on same day within about two hours of each other.
I was gonna say “day” but wasn’t sure if I was remembering that correctly.
As I recall he was kicked out of NYC by the local political machine because he would be less troublesome up in Albany. The state Republicans then put him up for the Vice Presidency so he’d stop bothering them.
Thanks for the article. I love these profiles.
Prog (for his time) certainly, but he is in my opinion quite the most interesting of the Presidents outside of a few Founders. And who doubts that he’d soundly thrash the Progs of this current generation that his spawned?
An obvious belief in national greatness, the personal tragedies, deliberate creation of himself in his youth, all the “great outdoors” stuff, shot in the chest and still speechifying, etc. Politics notwithstanding, he’s hard not to like.
Very personality-driven, and not a helluva lot different from OMB, in a lot of ways, but more so, if you know what I mean – more of a man.
I love these. Thanks for writing.
Despite his politics, you have to admit he was as interesting as they come, and we’d be better off if our politicians had that kind of life experience.
Counterpoint:
***
When Theodore Roosevelt took office in 1901, he already had a long legacy of animosity toward American Indians.
Seventeen years earlier, Roosevelt, then a young widower, left New York in favor of the Dakotas, where he built a ranch, rode horses and wrote about life on the frontier. When he returned to the east, he famously asserted that “the most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian.”
“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are,” Roosevelt said during a January 1886 speech in New York. “And I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
***
***
Roosevelt maintained that although white men held firm at the top of the social hierarchy, “inferior” races could rise from their lower stations. “Roosevelt believed that individuals could learn positive traits within their lifetime and assumed racial mobility was within human control,” says Michael Patrick Cullinane, a history professor at London’s University of Roehampton and author of Theodore Roosevelt’s Ghost: The History and Memory of an American Icon. But Roosevelt didn’t come to those ideas himself. According to Cullinane, his racial ideology drew on his readings of leading evolutionary theorists such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin.
Roosevelt “admired individual achievement above all things,” wrote biographer Edmund Morris—which is why he became the first president to invite an African American to dine at the White House when he broke bread with Tuskegee Institution founder Booker T. Washington just weeks after his inauguration. “The only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each Black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man, giving him no more and no less than he shows himself worthy to have,” Roosevelt wrote of his meeting.
***
The noble savage trope had a persistently difficult time catching on among the colonizing honky shitlords who actually shared the American frontier with them. Which isn’t an excuse for colonization, just a historical acknowledgment that encountering a nomadic tribal civilization, with no concepts such as private property, that was still practicing blood sacrifice, ceremonial disembowelment of battlefield enemies, scalping, and rape-as-war-booty may have left a less than flattering impression on strangers.
There is a place in Wyoming called Crow Heart Butte. The name is from a battle between the Shoshoni and the Crow. The Shoshoni won the battle and celebrated by dancing around a bonfire with the Crow chief’s heart skewered on a spear.
The Shoshoni chief Washakie had a dream that the white man would someday conquer the west and chose to ally with the US Army. Whether he had the dream for real or not, only he knows. He knew that his people would trust info from a dream because it came from the spirit world.
Tahoe means high water in Shoshoni. That mountain lake has crystal clear water. I’ve been there.
Plains Indian sign language council from 1930, interpreted by a white Army officer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfT2a5SGDFA
The plains tribes spoke many languages, but had a common sign language.
I lived in Lander, WY just off (by WY standards) the Shoshoni Rez. Washakie is still a powerful memory both on and off the reservation.
Colonization, for lack of a better word, is just part of the movement of peoples, the give-and-take of the conqueror-conquered dynamic. Either your culture is growing, or it is shrinking, and as we all know, nature abhors a vacuum. This is why we see wars in the Americas long before the “white man” arrives, the Japanese expanding into Manchuria, slave sales in Africa, Central Americans coming in columns, and every other injustice in the history of the world.
Anyone who gets all indignant over the “white man” and the most recent history is an historically illiterate fool.
Okay, y’all, after dumping my intellectual woes on my husband, I have come up with the topic for Tom Woods’s show (he emailed me today and said, “Where’s the agenda?”).
Self sufficiency and taking responsibility for yourself is a hard sell, especially when people get stuff for free and those people are the RATIONAL actors. We’re the chumps. Laura Ingalls Wilder (okay, Rose, because she said, “Make it a children’s book.”) romanticized it and made it attractive. There was very little hint of despair. You knew they were poor, but there was never any WE’RE GOING TO DIE TOMORROW! even in The Long Winter. I might even go so far as to say she/they gamified survival. The books are chock full of hope. What really happened (Pa running from debt collectors?!) is actually irrelevant. We can study and research about her life all we want, but in the end, the Little House books are what’s out there with a broad audience.
This is good. Will there be a link after you record?
Of course.
Now, this depends on whether he LIKES it or not, so…
He will like it.
🧙🏻🪄
You left off the “Or else!”
Channeling Silent Cal from upthread…
OOTL, and only vaguely recognized the name ‘Tom Woods’ but couldn’t remember from where and had to look him up. But if, as it seems, you’re appearing on the Tom Woods Show – very nice. Long before she took any interest in politics, my mom loved the Little House books and we read them together multiple times during my childhood. I was out of college before I found out Rose Wilder Lane ghostwrote them, let alone that she was a libertarian icon.
How much of them Rose ghost wrote is up for debate, which I don’t debate because I haven’t researched it enough. I know she and Laura had a contentious relationship and the project didn’t make it any better.
But Rose was a staunch socialist until she went to Bulgaria to correspond on the war there and that turned her around right quick.
Also, she was one of the three mothers of libertarianism.
As you can see, I never delved that deeply into the subject. I was just (pleasantly) surprised at the connection when I discovered it so many years after enjoying the books as a kid.
I’ve read The God of the Machine, but nothing by Wilder Lane (and all of Rand’s fiction *except* The Fountainhead). I’ll have to add The Discovery of Freedom to my queue. I suppose if and when “toxic femininity” is at last made manifest, those three will be its poster children.
Tom Woods show? Ooh!
I loved his portrayal by Brian Keith in The Wind and the Lion.
His books on hunting in the American west are still considered classics of the genre. I find them interesting to this day.
During his Inaugural parade he had six well known indians ride on horseback as part of the parade. (Quanah Parker/ Comanche, Buckskin Charlie/Ute, Hollow Horn Bear and American Horse/ Sioux, Little Plume/ Blackfoot and Geronimo/Apache.) At the time the riders were not American citizens since the Nazgul had ruled that the XIV Amendment didn’t apply to tribal members and the only way to become a citizen was through the naturalization process. This situation was dealt with in the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. The law was opposed by some tribes.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/photos-who-were-the-six-indian-chiefs-in-teddy-roosevelts-inaugural-parade-1976255/
Two father and a son pairs have both been decorated with the Medal of Honor- the Roosevelts and the MacArthurs.
Should have had John Jumper, Chili McIntosh, Buffalo Hump, Jim Buckmark, and Lone Watie.
Cool guy, but still kind of a piece of shit.
As are all complicated dudes.
Thanks, Animal! These are outstanding.
Very very long ago, I was bitching about my dad to someone (whom I thought would be sympathetic), who just said, “He sounds human.”
I have never forgotten that, and as I’ve grown older, I’ve tried to extend grace to people. My life is crazy enough; I don’t need to be judging people and adding to my load.
Most (all?) people that lead interesting lives are a mixed bag to one degree or another. The life of an angel is boring and no one’s pure devil (though some were close).
Tell me this isn’t Teddy Roosevelt.
https://youtu.be/VeImiF0jUVs
Jackson and Van Buren were really good Presidents, from a liberty perspective.
The “Liberty versus Power” podcast discusses the early American republic.
Here’s their first treatment of the Jackson Presidency:
https://youtu.be/NCybPFgKbMw
The trail of tears notwithstanding…
What would he think now?
Probably punch not a few people.
Also, probably binge on Yellowstone. “I find that I must meet this Taylor Sheridan. Bully for his writing!”
“…binge on Yellowstone”
🤣
Not out of the question!
It’s interesting to contemplate how our founders and political royalty would have adapted over time to variations on their ideology. I was just pointing out a while back on here that I suspect Thomas Jefferson would have fully embraced Marx owing to their shared seething hatred of religion, tradition and aristocracy, and shared love of revolutionary violence (so long as it didn’t muss the rugs of their own salons, of course). It’s easy to freeze them in time and assume they would have stubbornly held to whatever set of principles history has ascribed to them for the rest of time, but it’s just as likely they would adapt to changing circumstances, or fold like cheap tents to keep hold of political power. And even likelier that our hagiographies have overstated or misascribed some idealized version of the principles they espoused.
That’s an interesting perspective. I’d have to seriously think about that.
But at 4:30. i don’t think my brain is up for it.
I can see that. Jefferson was a sucker for permanent revolution.
Good morning on this very special day!
https://nationaltoday.com/national-deep-dish-pizza-day/
😉☕🍕
👎
Deep dish “pizza”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N6bNF4CAa5I
🎶🎶
Morning.
I hate insomnia
I could have posted the same thing two hours ago.
Good morning, ‘bodru, U, and Sean.
I, too, didn’t get nearly enough sleep, mainly because I had a heck of a time dropping off. Luckily, I don’t foresee having to do much thinking at work today. 😴
Morning.
I’ve reached my office, and wow I have a lot of windows open. How many emails, word, and excel documents do I need to read at once?
Alt+tab is my BFF.
That takes so much longer. I just figured out which ones I didn’t really need to keep open and closed them.
Also found a task I’d been in the middle of and gotten interrupted.
ALT+F4
Mornin’. Looks like an epidemic of insomnia. Been up since 3 meself, gonna be a fun day.
I like this scott adams so far.
https://scottadams.locals.com/post/3795736/robots-read-news-about-the-trump-arraignment
He should do a comic series
Robots would be a definite improvement over most of the talking heads.
Mornin’, reprobates!
Good morning, ‘patzie! How are you and yours today?
Superfluous! My favorite baseball team, with the highest payroll in history, has managed to lose their last two games by a combined score of 19-0. Long summer ahead.
3 teens don’t get far with stolen shoes
Most people don’t realize that beating someone unconscious means beating them almost to death. Like with most things, I blame TV.
Pistol whippings are bad?
How can you hate a guy that wore so much fringe.
That’s how I judge people.
#1 Person: TR
#2 Person: The various members of Buffalo Springfield
Me too, for what it’s worth.
You’ve got to stop with the references…
But then how will you cite sources?
Randy Savage
Easy, I hate fringe, it looks stupid.
Season 4 got weird.
“ Israeli Cops Beat Worshippers At Al Aqsa Mosque – Rockets Fly From Gaza – IDF Bombs Strip”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/israeli-cops-beat-worshippers-al-aqsa-mosque-rockets-fly-gaza-idf-bombs-strip
Pretty rough videos in there. It looks like the Israelis are trying to beat any goodwill they’ve incurred from the Sunni Arabs out of them.
For anyone paying attention to it: Are Trump’s 34 felonies based on individual repayments to his lawyer for essentially one act? If so, what a crock.