Brilliant Satire
Gerard Van der Leun noticed this brilliant bit of satire that you all should read.
While over at his site I also found this terrific quote:
""It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out where the strong man stumbled, or where a doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, and who comes up short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause. The man who at best knows the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold timid souls who never knew victory or defeat." -- Theodore RooseveltThat's quite a site Gerard's got going there.
Profound and true.
Yikes and Yay. A bit of Mark Twain in that Gerard. Good job. Sad, but true. Lovely quote. I don't think a lot of people realize the eloquence of T. Roosevelt. He was a wizard with a pen. He might have been a great blogger.
I've had that quote over my desk ever since I quit Wall Street and decided making money doing things I didn't give a damn about just for the dough wasn't enough.
I seem to remember reading of his boastful but accurate summary of America's Pan-American policy around the turn of the 20th century, that while Congress debated, he took Panama.
Good old Theodore. We never quite saw his like again. There was something about that man's endless combativeness in the face of any and all opposition, along with his utter fearlessness, that would warm my soul, if I thought I had one.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I stand corrected, having forgotten all about Harry S Truman when I wrote the comment above.
"Give 'em hell" Harry was Theodore Roosevelt's true successor. And Republican though I am, I salute that man's memory.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Katherine, you've got a good point there. About that TR would have been a great blogger. All the men and women of that mold have in common a sort of fearless consistency, without which, mere rhetoric is a meaningless exercise.
And yes, his writing is in fact highly readable. You can sample it for yourself online, where you can read his own commentaries on the First US Volunteer Cavalry (the "rough riders") that he recruited and led into combat, and who took the hill at San Juan in Cuba in 1898.
I was watching "Gettysburg" on DVD last night, and thinking of the life of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, one of America's greatest citizen-soldiers in the civil war, who died at 85 in 1914, when Roosevelt already was six years out of his remarkable presidency. I wonder from time to time whether TR patterned his own exemplary behavior after that of men such as Chamberlain, whose leadership on Little Round Top at Gettysburg saved the union army on the second day of that great battle.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Thanks Arnold. I'll go find the Rough Riders piece. I haven't seen Gettysburg yet, but I know of Chamberlain. Interesting correlation.
When I see Gettysburg, I'll give it a ponder.
Arnold Harris! Good to see you here again.