Dan Sherrier

I’m not going to write about President Obama’s Nobel win–not directly, anyway. Instead, I’ll reprint some quotes from the other two members of the “I won the Nobel Peace Prize as a sitting U.S. President” club.

Obama now joins the company of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson–one Republican president, one Democratic president, but two “Progressives.”

Today, we'd call him a "RINO."

I’m still working to educate myself on these two. I don’t profess to be an expert, and I’m not going to say either one was all good or all bad. But from what I’ve read so far, both became deeply infected by the “Progressive” ideology.

In simplest terms, that ideology asked people to turn, progressively, toward government as the solution to our troubles. The early 20th century “Progressive” movement was the pivot point when some Americans began shifting away from individualism and toward some degree of collectivism. The private good was seen as subservient to the public good.

Much of TR’s 1899 speech, “The Strenuous Life,” (delivered before he was even vice president) sounds hawkish, like something George W. Bush would appreciate.

TR said then, “If in 1861 the men who loved the Union had believed that peace was the end of all things, and war and strife was the worst of all things, and had acted up to their belief, we would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, we would have saved hundreds of millions of dollars. … We could have avoided all this suffering simply by shrinking from strife. And if we had thus avoided it, we would have shown that we were weaklings, and that we were unfit to stand among the great nations of the earth.”

Fast-forward to 1910, and you see a different side of TR in his speech, “The New Nationalism.” This came after his years as president, and before his 1912 campaign to return to the White House–but as a “Progressive,” not a Republican.

“We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.”

This next excerpt sounds like something Obama might say: “The people of the United States suffer from periodical financial panics to a degree substantially unknown among the other nations which approach us in financial strength. There is no reason why we should suffer what they escape. It is of profound importance that our financial system should be promptly investigated, and so thoroughly and effectively revised as to make certain that hereafter our currency will no longer fail at critical times to meet our needs.”

There’s more: “The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.

“But I think we may go still further. The right to regulate the use of wealth in the public interest is universally admitted. Let us admit also the right to regulate the terms and conditions of labor, which is the chief element of wealth, directly in the interest of the common good. The fundamental thing to do for every man is to give him a chance to reach a place in which he will make the greatest possible contribution to the public welfare.”

To be fair, throughout the speech, TR made it clear that there would be limits as to how far left he’d go.

For example, the last excerpt is immediately followed by: “Understand what I say there. Give him a chance, not push him up if he will not be pushed. Help any man who stumbles; if he lies down, it is a poor job to try to carry him.”

Still, his speech emphasized the collective country rather than the individuals inhabiting it.

“The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage. … It is still more impatient of the impotence which springs from over division of governmental powers, the impotence which makes it possible for local selfishness or for legal cunning, hired by wealthy special interests, to bring national activities to a deadlock,” he said.

“[The New Nationalism] demands of the judiciary that it shall be interested primarily in human welfare rather than in property.”

TR even injected a smidge of racial tension into the mix: “I believe in shaping the ends of government to protect property as well as human welfare. Normally, and in the long, the ends are the same; but whenever the alternative must be faced, I am for men and not for property, as you were in the Civil War.” (I believe he was speaking to Civil War veterans here, from the Union side.)

Clever little rhetorical trick there, conflating the end of slavery with the “Progressive” movement, to guide minds to conclude that if it is change, then it is good. Of course, it’s a fallacious comparison. Slaves were living people. Money and real estate are not.

I encourage everyone to find and read the whole speech and study Teddy Roosevelt in more depth. It’s not surprising Sen. John McCain admires him so.

Hopefully within the next few days, I’ll compile some quotes from Woodrow Wilson, the other Nobel-winning “Progressive” president.

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