I'd suggest that Theodore Roosevelt deserves as much recognition today as he did when he was included among other great presidents who were memorialized on Mount Rushmore. His legacy includes changing the nation's political system by placing emphasis on the presidency as a public centerpiece of our nation, despite what Donald Trump has done to disparage the office.
Roosevelt is heralded as the architect of not only the modern presidency as a world leader, but for his liberal proposals that led to FDR's New Deal era.
He fought for the rights of the Creek Indians and other tribes when they were cheated out of land parcels; he fought Standard Oil and other corporate anti-trust violators regarding unfair pricing and monopolizing markets; and at the 1884 GOP National Convention in Chicago, he gave a speech convincing delegates to nominate African-American John R. Lynch to be its temporary chair.
Roosevelt was a conservationist: "He was proudest of his work in conservation of natural resources and extending federal protection to land and wildlife. By the end of his second term in office, Roosevelt used executive orders to establish 150 million acres of reserved forestry land," according to the Theodore Roosevelt Wikipedia page.
He was also father of the Food and Drug Administration for his early efforts to regulate food safety.
Again, he is a hero to liberals for his "proposals in 1907-12 that presaged the modern welfare state of FDR's New Deal era," (from Wikipedia), and that put the environment on the national agenda.
I don't understand all of this blather and complaints regarding a statue of him going up in some park, except that some women find another statue of a man anywhere offensive.
Men aren't from Mars, and women aren't from Venus. We're from the same damned planet.
Nicholas Campbell
San Luis Obispo
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