Theodore Roosevelt

5 Pages 1134 Words

The next essay, by Gail Bederman, is an astonishing account of Theodore Roosevelt’s rise to fame in the 1890’s. In this account, she tells of Roosevelt’s political beginnings as a State assemblyman of New York. Her account starts with his presence in the assembly seen as an effeminate man. He was mocked by his peers incessantly. They called him names such as ‘Jane-Dandy’ and ‘Punkin-Lily’, and even comparing him with the likes of a known homosexual, Oscar Wilde. Roosevelt knew his Political career was in great jeopardy of being diffused before it even began. Knowing something about his history, he quit the senate and traveled west after his mother and wife both passed away on the same day. Bederman seems to paint a slightly different tale of TR needing to make this change for his political life. Spending five years in the western wilderness not only gave him the ‘manliness’ he was looking for but the basis for his political ideology. That of a strong but civilized white man. Using an 1899 speech to coin his phrase ‘The Strenuous Life’, Roosevelt laid down his plan as he saw it for the American man. Using the philosophy of human evolution as his argument that the dominant species will overcome. His ideals of American virilty and manhood were mandatory if America the nation was to hold its own in the world. As he saw it, our fight against the savage Indians of the west was our calling to world dominance. To be over civilized, peaceful, and lenient was now something to be ashamed of. It was effeminate and a way to lose control of our destiny. If we became luxury-loving or lost our virile zest, someone else, a manlier race, would then step in and become the power of the world. He explained his imperialism this way. A man working for his family and country were not enough. This virile manhood required us to do work outside our nation, just like a man goes outside the home to work everyday. The opportunities of the time,...