Over the past two days, I read this remarkable book about the death-defying journey Teddy Roosevelt took through the Amazon shortly after his failed effort to win back the presidency in 1912.
Before getting to the last of Roosevelt’s lifetime of expeditions, the book opens with his final speech of the 1912 campaign. Intrigued, when I finished the book, I decided by take a look back at more of what he said in that campaign.
And I’m so glad I did. You may be as well, especially if you’re as concerned as I am by the attacks on democracy we are seeing across the country—including the now infamous Issue 1 in Ohio, scheduled (illegally) for this August.
Here are Roosevelt’s words in March 1912, at Carnegie Hall (the emphases are all mine). Be prepared—his concerns will sound familiar to you now:
“The great fundamental issue now before before our people can be stated briefly. It is, Are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves? I believe they are. My opponents do not. I believe in the right of the people to rule. I believe that the majority of the plain people of the United States will, day in and day out, make fewer mistakes in governing themselves than any smaller class or body of men, no matter what their training, will make in trying to govern them. I believe, again, that the American people are, as a whole, capable of self-control and of learning by their mistakes. Our opponents pay lip-loyalty to this doctrine; but they show their real beliefs by the way in which they champion every device to make the nominal rule of the people a sham.
I have scant patience with this talk of the tyranny of the majority. Wherever there is tyranny of the majority, I shall protest against it with all my heart and soul. But we are today suffering from the tyranny of minorities. It is a small minority that is grabbing our coal-deposits, our water-powers, and our harbor fronts. A small minority is battening on the sale of adulterated foods and drugs. It is a small minority that lies behind monopolies and trusts….The only tyrannies from which men, women, and children are suffering in real life are the tyrannies of minorities….
No sane man who has been familiar with the government of this country for the last twenty years will complain that we have had too much of the rule of the majority. The trouble has been a far different one that, at many times and in many localities, there have held public office in the States and in the nation men who have, in fact, served not the whole people, but some special class or special interest. I am not thinking only of those special interests which by grosser methods, by bribery and
crime, have stolen from the people.
I am thinking as much of their respectable allies and figureheads, who have ruled and legislated and decided as if in some way the vested rights of privilege had a first mortgage on the whole United States, while the rights of all the people were merely an unsecured debt. Am I overstating the case? Have our political leaders always, or generally, recognized their duty to the people as anything more than a duty to disperse the mob, see that the ashes are taken away, and distribute patronage? Have our leaders always, or generally, worked for the benefit of human beings, to increase the prosperity of all the people, to give each some opportunity of living decently and bringing up his children well? The questions need no answer….
Now there has sprung up a feeling deep in the hearts of the people-not of the bosses and professional politicians, not of the beneficiaries of special privilege—a pervading belief of thinking men that when the majority of the people do in fact, as well as theory, rule, then the servants of the people will come more quickly to answer and obey, not the commands of the special interests, but those of the whole people….”
Roosevelt goes on to list a number of reforms that will serve this end:
“First, there are the "initiative and referendum," which are so framed that if the legislatures obey the command of some special interest, and obstinately refuse the will of the majority, the majority may step in and legislate directly. No man would say that it was best to conduct all legislation by direct vote of the people--it would mean the loss of deliberation, of patient consideration but, on the other hand, no one whose mental arteries have not long since hardened can doubt that the proposed changes are needed when the legislatures refuse to carry out the will of the people. The proposal is a method to reach an undeniable evil….”
“We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men. If on this new continent we merely build another country of great but unjustly divided material prosperity, we shall have done nothing; and we shall do as little if we merely set the greed of envy against the greed of arrogance, and thereby destroy the material well-being of all of us. To turn this government either into government by a plutocracy or government by a mob would be to repeat on a larger scale the lamentable failures of the world that is dead. We stand against all tyranny, by the few or by the many. We stand for 'the rule of the many in the interest of all of us, for the rule of the many in a spirit of courage, of common sense, of high purpose, above all in a spirit of kindly justice toward every man and every woman. We not merely admit, but insist, that there must be self-control on the part of the people, that they must keenly perceive their own duties as well as the rights of others; but we also insist that the people can do nothing unless they not merely have, but exercise to the full, their own rights.“
Uncanny.
111 years later, we are engaged in the same struggle. In so many states, all that Roosevelt describes then is exactly what we face now:
A small group, locked into power in a state, ruling that state on behalf of a privileged few…of a “special class” and “special interest”…who work to keep them in power.
“Legislatures [who] refuse to carry out the will of the people”—the majority—on issue after issue, from a woman’s right to choose, to supporting public schools, to a middle-class based economics, to common sense gun reforms, to education freedom (Ie. No books bans), and so on.
And when it comes to democracy itself, politicians “champion[ing] every device to make the nominal rule of the people a sham.”
So it is not ironic, but perfectly predictable, that as they do all this dirty work in places like OH, they are trying to kill the very FIRST reform that TR and others championed and put into place in states like Ohio: the initiative and referendum process that gives the citizens the power to assert themselves when their so-called “elected” (Ie. Gerrymandered) officials refuse to reflect their will or best interest on practically any issue.
Knowing the continuing power of that people-driven reform—enacted by reformers like Roosevelt a century ago—to check them, today’s statehouse politicians, fueled by the money of the very special interests Roosevelt warned of then, are eager to take it away.
So….those of you in Ohio and across the country battling against Issue 1 at the moment, and the broader attack on democracy taking place everywhere via similarly cynical ways and anti-democracy “devices”, know that you are part of a centuries-long battle of patriots and past heroes who did the same.
As Roosevelt said in closing that speech:
“The worth of our great experiment depends upon its being in good faith an experiment -- the first that has ever been tried -- in true democracy on the scale of a continent, on a scale as vast as that of the mightiest empires of the Old World. Surely this is a noble ideal, an ideal for which it is worth while to strive, an ideal for which at need it is worth while to sacrifice much; for our ideal is the rule of all the people in a spirit of friendliest brotherhood toward each and every one of the people.”
Keep going!
For several years now I've felt we need a Teddy Roosevelt to lead us. Any nominees? I've also felt we need an Edward R. Murrow broadcast journalist of our time. Any nominees?
It’s a great book. Read it a few years ago and the speech is so relevant to today. Keep fighting!