SamuelRSmith said:
A progressive war-mongerer. Just like many of our Presidents today. Also, he had completely bizarre views on how the world worked, and was amazingly racist (though, I don't necessarily blame him for that, as it was more a product of his time). |
A) Amazingly racist? He was one of the most progressie people of his time. Hell, he almost didn't win reelection specifically because he was seen as being "anti-white" because he put more black people in higher places then anyone else, specifically went out of his way to promote "Pro black" white politicians in various areas regardless of party and was the first president to invite a black man to dinner at the white house?
In general, Teddy Roosevelts views on race were summed up as "People should be judged by ther individual character regardless of race. (Or sex, he was actually an early proponent of woman's suffarage."
He did hold the belief that other races on average were "less advanced" then white people, but could get there with proper education, treatment and training... though so did Booker T. Washington actually.
Because I mean, at that point it was true basically... because black people at that point were all slaves, and the children of slaves and intentioanlly kept out of stuff that basically taught you how to survive in modern day society. Even Booker T Washington wanted to put civil rights on the backburner while working more on things like education and jobs.
B) Actually for his time, you could more call Roosevelt's position "Agressive Moderatism". He essentially split the issue on almost every thing involved in his presidency.
C) He stopped more wars in his presidency then he fought in. It's a little known historical fact, because the whitehouse burned information afterwords, but the Roosevelt Corralary was inacted specifically because Geramny planned to invade and conquer Venezuela due to property rights, and prepare it as a position from which to attack the US.... and additionally prevented a German/French War from happening due to Wilhelm's anger at not having any african colonies.
All it did was make sure that other countries also mostly left central and south america alone, more or less forcing them to adopt "Libretarian" type views in accordinace with it.
The only issue really is Panama. Which only came about because of Colombia deciding to go back on two treaties they had already agreed on.
Including the Panama Canal deal. Nations of that time would of mostly just invaded and took what they were owed by agreement. Which is what happened in the above case with Germany. (Well and your UK, but you guys backed out pretty quickly.)
All told, it's hard to think of many presidents who intervened less who had so much ability to mess with other countries.
