The Pendragon's Hall

The Leftist historians follow very predictable patterns: they spend decades excoriating a figure; then, when they realize no one believes them, they decide to recreate said figure in their own image. Richard the Lionheart was a greatly admired king for years until political correctness set it and any King who made his living killing off Muslims in the Holy Land could not have been quite so great. So he was called a bumbling buffoon with good PR. But because all manly men must somehow be gay, historians have recently decided (based on what evidence I have no idea) that he was a homosexual. And this is why he didn't have children.

The latest American to face their repainting has been the great Theodore Roosevelt. After years of being sneered at as an imperialist, racist president, he is now somehow becoming the image of progressivism. The Pendragon is currently reading a book of TR's writings entitled "The Man in the Arena", even a cursory reading of which shows how completely at-home TR would be in today's Republican Party and how completely anti-"Progressive" he actually would be, despite his 1912 third-party run for president. Even TR's vaunted environmentalism is not the same as the leftists of today. In African Game Trails, he wrote: "Similarly, game laws should be drawn in the interests of the whole people, keeping steadily in mind certain facts that ought to be self-evident to everyone above the intellectual level of those well-meaning persons who apparently think all shooting is wrong and that man could continue to exist if all the wild animals were allowed to increase unchecked." This sound more like George Bush, who agreed that environmental concerns were valid, but insisted that they be based on science, than like Al Gore and the nutwing Sierra Club types. For the record, if TR were alive today, he would not be attending poetry readings in Boston--he would be swigging beer down at the NASCAR track and cheering loudly for good hits in the football game. He was no pansy, this TR. That should have been everyone's first clue he was no Leftist.

TR's pro-Americanism was breathtaking. He argued in his The Winning of the West that the inherent military and civilizational superiority of the Anglo-Saxon peoples led to the conquest of North America. While his analysis is very much in doubt, at least to the Pendragon, it is intriguing that the new icon of Leftism was boldly pro-American. Perhaps the most convincing evidence, however, was that TR was tough on crime. As police commissioner in New York City, he not only combatted big-business corruption but also low-life criminal elements. On dangerous criminals, he commented: "Sentimentality on behalf of such men is really almost as unhealthy and wicked as the criminality of the men themselves." Pause for a moment to hear the "ouch" emanate from the Left of today, who insist on giving serial killers chance after chance to get their 100th kill and feel good about themselves. TR continues (keep in mind this is the TR that everyone calls the scourge of the business world) on the subject of employers of prostitutes: "The employers and all others responsible for these conditions stand on a moral level not far above the white slavers themselves. But it is a mistake to suppose that either the correction of these economic conditions or the abolition of the white slave trade will wholly correct the evil, or will even reach the major part of it." What?! Punishing rich people won't help the poor? TR goes on to claim that what really needs to be done is the demand for the services of prostitutes needs to be stamped out, and girls need to be told there are better ways for them to earn money. Intriguing possibility--sounds like what Republicans have been saying for years.

TR was no friend to the judiciary, which was as corrupt in his day as it is today. He mocked it in his autobiography for enforcing the laws on only drinking alcohol with meals by declaring a meal to consist of "seventeen beers and one pretzel." The liqour establishment rejoiced, he noted sourly, that TR's tyrannical power had been curbed. Boy, would he and Bush have a lot in common.

We could go on and on. TR was no modern day liberal. There were elements of his program that appealed to blue collar people of course and he was a little left of center in his own day. But the myth that is rapidly growing that with TR's defeat in the 1912 presidential election, the Republican Party collapsed hopelessly into reactionism while the reform elements became Democrats is just that: a myth. The TR syndrome is alive and well today but not in the Democratic Party. The idea of manly reform keeping with the American tradition is being nurtured by the Bush White House and by his allies in Congress and the states. Historians need to read the texts fully, rather than look for ways to change long-held perceptions of a historical character into something they find more palatable.