Jeniffer electronic book

A democracy of individual rights, that is, must either
suffer reconstruction by the logic of a process of efficient national
organization, or else it may pervert that organization to the service of
its own ambiguous, contradictory, and in the end subversive political
purposes. A better justification for these statements must be reserved
for the succeeding chapter; but in the meantime I will take the risk
asserting that Mr. Roosevelt's nationalism really implies a democracy of
individual and social improvement. His nationalizing programme has in
effect questioned the value of certain fundamental American ideas, and
if Mr. Roosevelt has not himself outgrown these ideas, his misreading of
his own work need not be a matter of surprise. It is what one would
expect from the prophet of the Strenuous Life.
Mr. Roosevelt has done little to encourage candid and consistent
thinking. He has preached the doctrine that the paramount and almost the
exclusive duty of the American citizen consists in being a
sixty-horse-power moral motor-car.


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