The New Nationalism

Both Morris and Cooper attach much importance to the 1910 speech Roosevelt made on The New Nationalism while stumping for Republican candidates in Osawatomie, Kansas. He had lifted the title from a book by Herbert Croly. He would later combine this speech with other speeches in a book of his own. But, this speech contained the germ of his idealistic vision of a more vigorous America. Essentially, an America modeled upon himself.

What he wanted most was for Americans to rise above materialistic persuits and understand their unique role in shaping America's course. He pushed for greater regulations of industry, but at the same time recognized the value of industry. He wanted Americans to forgo their sense of isolationism and become more aware of America's growing dominance on the world's stage. It was almost like he was conferring a sense of noblesse oblige on all Americans.

Cooper notes that the subsequent 1912 election, which pitted Roosevelt against Wilson, lifted American politics to a level not seen since 1800, where grand political philosophies were being hashed out on the stump by two of America's most dynamic speakers. In many ways both Wilson and Roosevelt shared this sense of a "New Nationalism," but approached it from different angles.

Comments

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order

A quarter of a century, however, is time enough to dispel some of the myths that have accumulated around the crisis of the early Thirties and the emergence of the New Deal. There is, for example, the myth that world conditions rather than domestic errors and extravagances were entirely responsible for the depression. There is the myth that the depression was already over, as a consequence of the ministrations of the Hoover Administration, and that it was the loss of confidence resulting from the election of Roosevelt that gave it new life. There is the myth that the roots of what was good in the New Deal were in the Hoover Administration - that Hoover had actually inaugurated the era of government responsibility for the health of the economy and the society. There is the contrasting myth (for myths do not require inner consistency) that the New Deal was alien in origins and in philosophy; that - as Mr. Hoover put it - its philosophy was "the same philosophy of government which...

Dispatches from Vilnius

Search This Blog