Teddy Roosevelt - The New Nationalism Speech

Click here for an article at Teaching American History which includes Roosevelt's "New Nationalism" speech. Warning: It's pretty wonky! But Roosevelt lived in a time not unlike our own, the first Gilded Age (it seems we're living in the second). And he has some pretty interesting things to say. Here's the article's introduction to the speech:

Vice President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) ascended to the presidency after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901. Aligned with the more reformist, progressive wing of the Republican Party, Roosevelt advocated far-reaching policies aimed at, among other things, the regulation and prosecution of monopolies under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890), industrial safety and labor regulations, conservationism, and a muscular foreign policy. Employing a robust understanding of executive authority (he saw the president as the “steward of the people,” authorized to take any action for the people’s good unless that action was expressly prohibited by the Constitution and the laws) and championing the increasing role of administrative agencies to address the challenges of industrial America, Roosevelt was a key figure in the progressives’ transformation of American politics in the early twentieth century. Increasingly, the language of American politics became one of problem solving through the moral, rhetorical leadership of the president and the scientific expertise of administrative experts in the federal bureaucracy.

A year out of office, Roosevelt delivered the following speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, at the dedication of a park built in honor of abolitionist John Brown. Addressing an audience that included many Civil War veterans, his aim was to mend the rift that had emerged between the progressive and conservative wings of the Republican Party since William Howard Taft had assumed the presidency. In the speech, Roosevelt laid out a political platform, much of which was built upon the Square Deal of his own presidency. Roosevelt embraced many of the progressive talking points of the day, especially in his proposals for increased administrative regulation of private business, his remarks on the redistribution of wealth, and his support for the direct primary. He argued that under modern conditions, these and other reforms would help secure the common good and foster greater equality of opportunity for American citizens. He dubbed his program “The New Nationalism,” a term borrowed from Herbert Croly’s seminal 1909 book, The Promise of American Life. Roosevelt used the theme two years later when he broke from the Republicans and ran for the presidency under the banner of the “Bull Moose” Progressive Party.