Theodore Roosevelt vs Betsy DeVos

[orangecrush]

"I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be non-sectarian and no public moneys appropriated for sectarian schools." Theodore Roosevelt, Address, New York, October 12, 1915

[Docreed2003]

1. Teddy is one of my personal heroes...even if he was a "republican"

[orangecrush]

6. The real "most intereating man in the world"

[Docreed2003]

10. Lmao...savage before savage was cool

[orangecrush]

7. Truth

https://www.nps.gov/thro/learn/historyculture/roosevelt-pursues-boat-thieves.htm

[Gabi Hayes]

2. TR...the most overrated president in history. set us on our imperial course:

"Give me that, or I'm going over there!"

after manifest destiny was secured in our own country, he "realized'' expansion was "necessary" to sell all the goods the industrial revolution helped us churn out

read "The Imperial Cruise" to see how he set the stage for Japanese expansion, considering them yellow aryans, the inscrutables in the Far East with whom we could deal.

that's just the tip of the iceberg. he might've been even more insane than what we're stuck with now

lots and lots of largely ignored analysis on that mendacioius/self-promoting/monstrous/MURDEROUS/bully/creep. one slight difference between him and that fat, bloated draft dodger hiding under his desk is that TR appears to not have been the physical coward that the current offal office resident clearly is.

[Gabi Hayes]

4. yeah yeah sure....I'm full of it. how about this guy?

http://www.wbur.org/artery/2017/03/09/kinzer-true-flag

In 1898, the United States "suddenly found itself with the chance to rule faraway lands," Stephen Kinzer writes in his new book. "The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire," focuses on the causes and consequences of "a ravenous 55 day spasm" when "the United States asserted control over five far-flung lands with a total of 11 million habitants: Guam, Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico."
..........................

However, one need not be local in order to know who Kinzer is. He spent more than two decades at the New York Times in various capacities, including as the bureau chief for Managua, Bonn, Berlin and Istanbul. Furthermore, he is the author of eight previous books, including "The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War" and "Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq."

Like any good scholar who recognizes the present in the past, Kinzer identifies much throughout “The True Flag” about the Spanish-American War that Americans would later experience in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Then as now, the American endeavor in the Philippines was marred by unrealistic time and troop requirements, unexpected civilian casualties, unwelcoming natives, mission creep and forms of what have come to be called counterinsurgency and even waterboarding, which contemporaries called the “water cure” and to which Mark Twain would raise what became a standard objection in the 2000s.

.......................

Roosevelt became a fanatical imperialist during his occupation of several offices throughout the 1880s and 1890s, not once he became president in 1900. Twain, meanwhile, had spent the 1890s living abroad and his last major work — "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court" — was a decade behind him when the United States attacked the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in the Philippines.

who remembers the Anti-Imperialis league, and how hard they railed against TR and the other maniacs who set us on the course we've travelled for over 100 years?

[orangecrush]

8. ..

https://www.nps.gov/thro/learn/historyculture/roosevelt-pursues-boat-thieves.htm

[Gabi Hayes]

9. interesting! sounds just like him. john muir, national parks, etal. lots of contra-

dictions of character.....no question that he was a madman, though; clearly overcompensating for the undying humiliation of having a father who bought his way out of serving in the civil war

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-mcfarland/mark-twain-and-americas-w_b_1683103.html

.....Roosevelt, Twain wrote, was “far and away the worst president we have ever had.” Why did Mark Twain, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, feel that way about an immensely popular occupant of the White House to whom history has been very kind?

Of our 44 presidents, professional historians generally rank Roosevelt in the top five or six. And the sixty-foot-high visage of that same Roosevelt gazes out from Mount Rushmore alongside three at the pinnacle of our pantheon: Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.

think I'm going with Twain on this one

[orangecrush]

11. It's cool

Samuel C. is a favorite of mine!

His essay "The War Prayer", about the beginning of the Spanish American war, moves me to this day.

[orangecrush]

5. Who ya gonna call?

Trust Busters!


The Sherman Anti-Trust Act

Although he himself was a man of means, he criticized the wealthy class of Americans on two counts. First, continued exploitation of the public could result in a violent uprising that could destroy the whole system. Second, the captains of industry were arrogant enough to believe themselves superior to the elected government. Now that he was President, Roosevelt went on the attack.

The President's weapon was the SHERMAN ANTITRUST ACT, passed by Congress in 1890. This law declared illegal all combinations "in restraint of trade." For the first twelve years of its existence, the Sherman Act was a paper tiger. United States courts routinely sided with business when any enforcement of the Act was attempted.

For example, the AMERICAN SUGAR REFINING COMPANY controlled 98 percent of the sugar industry. Despite this virtual monopoly, the Supreme Court refused to dissolve the corporation in an 1895 ruling. The only time an organization was deemed in restraint of trade was when the court ruled against a labor union

Roosevelt knew that no new legislation was necessary. When he sensed that he had a sympathetic Court, he sprung into action.

http://www.ushistory.org/us/43b.asp

[The empressof all]

3. I was thinking about vouchers this morning.

I am a tax payer who no longer has children in school. How will I be able to designate my tax dollars to the schools of my choice. It seems discriminatory to me that only parents with children of school age can make this determination.