Old Time Journalism Has Vanished
In these modern times, what has become of honesty, integrity, truth in advertising, truth in reporting? How would Theodore Roosevelt respond to today’s Lame Stream Media? Would he “hide” behind the White House walls all in the name of Compassionate Conservatism? Would he “worry” that people might take offense if he stood up to defend himself? Or would he stand and say, “I am mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!!”?
President Bush is a good man. No, he doesn’t speak eloquently and an Orator he is not. He is a fellow Texican and I am SO glad that he has been the CIC during this time of crisis. However, he needs to step out of his “I’m the Compassionate Conservative President” facade and come out friggin’ swinging!!
I have been studying American Government and American History for quite some time now and with all of TR’s faults, he did not ever take one on the chin without the other guy feeling some pain as well.
I ran across a speech during my studies and this one in particular by TR struck me to the quick. It is “Rather” long so we will take this speech a little at a time and parse it out.
“THE MAN WITH THE MUCK RAKE”April 15, 1906
Over a century ago Washington laid the corner stone of the Capitol in what was then little more than a tract of wooded wilderness here beside the Potomac. We now find it necessary to provide by great additional buildings for the business of the government.
This growth in the need for the housing of the government is but a proof and example of the way in which the nation has grown and the sphere of action of the national government has grown. We now administer the affairs of a nation in which the extraordinary growth of population has been outstripped by the growth of wealth in complex interests. The material problems that face us today are not such as they were in Washington’s time, but the underlying facts of human nature are the same now as they were then. Under altered external form we war with the same tendencies toward evil that were evident in Washington’s time, and are helped by the same tendencies for good. It is about some of these that I wish to say a word today.
In Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck Rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor. In “Pilgrim’s Progress” the Man with the Muck Rake is set forth as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing. Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck rake, speedily becomes, not a help but one of the most potent forces for evil.
“…But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck rake, speedily becomes, not a help but one of the most potent forces for evil.”
What a POWERFUL statement. Was he speaking to those that don’t want to “make waves”. Was he speaking to the Silent Majority? One has to wonder. Times may change but somethings never change…like human nature.
The continuations of this subject will be in the comments area…
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