Read Roosevelt’s Words Before Voting

From Art Hall, Publisher (1 of 3)
The people behind the Progressive Movement, which had its beginnings around a century ago, aspired to lofty goals. U. S. President Teddy Roosevelt was instrumental in its creation. As we go into national elections this fall, it would be helpful to us voters to compare his thinking to the practices of our government leadership in Washington today.
In 1910 he delivered a speech to the Sorbonne in Paris entitled “Citizenship in a Republic.” Below, I have quoted and paraphrased from his address, extracting the jewels which relate to us today. Before laying my work before you, I asked my wife to read it; when she saw the length she said, “It’s too long; nobody will finish it.” I responded that I found his thoughts so interesting and encouraging, that I did not want to cut it any further. After she read it, she said, “I agree. Break it into parts.” Here we go:
• The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high.
• Education must contain much besides book-learning in order to be really good. We must always remember that no keenness of intellect, no polish, no cleverness, make up for the lack of the solid qualities: Self-restraint, self-mastery, common sense, individual responsibility, courage and resolution. Without them no people can control itself, or save itself from being controlled from the outside. I speak to brilliant assemblage; I speak in a great university which represents the flower of the highest intellectual development, yet I know I have the assent of all of you when I add that more important still are the commonplace, every-day qualities and virtues. Such ordinary, every-day qualities include the will and the power to work.
• The average man must earn his own livelihood. He should be trained to do so, and he should be taught that not to work is contemptible. In the next place, the good man should be both a strong and a brave man; that is, he should be able to fight, he should be able to serve his country as a soldier, if the need arises.
• Nothing can compensate for the lost of great, fundamental virtues. Character must show itself in the man’s performance both of the duty he owes himself and of the duty he owes the state. The man’s foremast duty is owed to himself and his family by earning money, by providing what is essential to material well-being. He must pull his own weight first, and not be a burden to others.
• That is why I decline to recognize the mere multimillionaire, the man of mere wealth, as an asset of value. If he uses his wealth in a way that makes him a real benefit, of real use- and such is often the case- why, then he does become an asset. But it is the way in which it has been earned or used, and not the mere fact of wealth, that entitles him to the credit. There is need in business, as in most other forms of human activity, of people of great intelligence. It is a good thing that they should have ample recognition, ample reward.
• Property rights must be carefully safeguarded; human rights and property rights are fundamentally identical.
• The Orator: all that the orator can do of value is to enable the one to explain himself; if it enables the orator to put false values on things, it merely makes him power for mischief. The better the oratory the greater the damage to the public it deceives. Indeed, it is a sign of marked political weakness if the people tend to be carried away by mere oratory, if they tend to value words in and for themselves, as divorced from the deeds for which they are supposed to stand. The phrase-maker, the phrase-monger, the ready talker, however great his power, whose speech does not make for courage, sobriety, and right understanding, is simply a noxious element, and it speaks ill for the public if he has influence over them. To admire the gift of oratory without regard to the moral quality behind the gift is to do wrong to the republic.
From the Bible: What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror; then (in Heaven) we shall see face-to-face. From 1 Corinthians 13