“Give me this day my daily bread …” --- is this the familiar
prayer we learned --- once upon a time? How are ordinary citizens to measure their progress?
In 1910 Theodore Roosevelt was still a young man (51) by
historical standards but already a former president. His term had run from the assassination of
President McKinley in 1901 through 1908.
After completing an administration featuring an agenda of activist,
progressive reform, T.R. declined to run for
a third term in the election of 1908. He
was honoring the tradition of George Washington. Instead, he threw
his overwhelming popular support behind his then-Vice President and hand picked
successor, William Howard Taft.
To be progressive in 1910 was to belong to America ’s
middle class. But Mr. Taft had botched T.R.’s progressive agenda and was now the nation’s top
reactionary. The effect was akin to a
political about-face. Systematically,
Mr. Taft began to roll back T.R.’s progressive reforms in a bow to the
Republican Party’s affluent, conservative base.
T.R.’s alarm was palpable, his political unrest deepening.
In August 1910 T.R. was to make a case during a speech in Osawatomie , Kansas
In his New Nationalism speech, T.R. reflected that there
had been “two great crises in our country’s history: first, when it was formed,
and then, again, when it was perpetuated … .” The third great crisis was upon
us, the struggle “to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity.”
T.R. insisted that only a powerful federal government could
regulate the economy and guarantee social justice. His central tenet was
government protection of property rights, a traditional approach. But he elevated human welfare, the second critical
component, to a higher priority. T.R. understood that the success of any
presidential administration must be measured by this and would be impossible
otherwise.
“At many stages in the advance of humanity,” T.R. said, the
“conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men
who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress.”
The goal was “to gain and hold the right of self-government as
against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into
machinery for defeating the popular will.”
As was the case 100 years ago, today it can be expected,
however, that the privileged classes will be hospitable only to those reforms
which spare their privileges. Nevertheless, it would be intriguing to
view the vexing problem of inequality of opportunity through the lens of human
welfare ahead of any other legitimate interest. The goal would secure the benefits of the
existing organization, while casting the net of opportunity over a larger
social area.
Conservative principles, traditions and national history
require only the gradual alteration of adverse social conditions in the name of
progress. Perhaps a people can best
exhibit its common sense so clearly as to be contemporary without breaking the
ties of historical anchorage. To move too suddenly by uprooting any essential
element of the national tradition would come at a severe penalty, as ordinary
citizens discovered when they decided to cut slavery out of their national
composition.
It is assumed that ordinary citizens wish to escape the
need to regain their health by means of another surgical operation. They must then consider carefully how much of
a reorganization of traditional institutions, policies and ideas are necessary
to achieve a new, more stable national balance. They must also consider that any disloyalty to
democracy by way of national policy will in the end be fatal to national unity.
The book, Life among the Ordinary: Completing Our Nation's Great Unfinished Business, undertakes
such an exercise.
-Michael D’Angelo
