September 7, 2003
HISTORY DOES'T REPEAT ITSELF, BUT HISTORIANS DO.
The president and the assassin A century ago, terrorists struck at the heart of America. Our leaders hit back hardand also began addressing the country's real problems. (Eric Rauchway, Boston Globe, 9/7/03)
In September 1901, a terrorist attack in Buffalo, N.Y., struck at the heart of a new American empire. It was the latest in a decades-long string of attacks on Western nations. But the response of American leadersabove all, Theodore Roosevelt established a plan for deflecting the hate that inspired such assaults. Even as Roosevelt denounced the evil of terrorism, he used it to invoke the better angels of American nature against the shortcomings of his own society. His methods were influential, though today, they might seem unfamiliar. . . .This is apparently how we are doomed to spend our Septembers for the rest of our lives: refighting the battles of September 12, 2001. We must reform ourselves, we must recognize our own responsibilities, they hate us for a reason, we must not be blinded by our own imperfections, rather we must fight the forces of international terrorism by reforming corporate governence, taming the business cycle (if we could, wouldn't we?) and regulating laissez-faire capitalism.As the violence continued, Oswald pointed out, a pattern appeared: The murderers hailed from countries in Eastern and Mediterranean Europe, where "the contrasts of wealth and poverty have reached their most cruel extreme." Many American pundits came to believe that anarchist terrorism was a social problem, a revolt of "misery against happiness," that, unlike insanity, required a political remedy. By the turn of the century none had appeared.
So on Sept. 6, 1901, when an anarchist assassin fatally shot President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, thus elevating Vice President Theodore Roosevelt to the White House, it was shocking but not exactly surprising. . . .
Among American statesmen only Theodore Roosevelt, who had long urged his peers to take radical threats seriously, appeared unembarrassed by the problems that terrorism posed.
"The time of the great social revolutions has arrived," Roosevelt wrote in 1894. "We are all peering into the future to try to forecast the action of the great dumb forces set in operation by the stupendous industrial revolution which has taken place during the present century. We do not know what to make of the vast displacements of population, the expansion of the towns, the unrest and discontent of the masses."
Like the anarchists, Roosevelt diagnosed a growing awareness among Americans of genuine injustice. He believed, as few other politicians did, that the comforts of middle-class life blinded many of his fellow countrymen to the hardships endured by the majority of humankindhardships whose effects might be lessened by political action.
And so, although Roosevelt opened his first address to Congress by pledging himself to fight the "evil" of anarchism, he moved immediately into a much longer section of his speech titled "Regulation of Corporations." He proposed to address the great "social problems" and the "antagonism" of the day the radicalism that threatened Americans' safety by trimming the excesses of unfettered capitalism. . . .
Instead of writing off terrorism as the work of foreigners and madmen, that is, Roosevelt turned the problem into a chance for American self-examination and self-improvement. In the wake of a national trauma, nobody seriously challenged him. His agenda of changing American capitalism, in part so that it would attract less animosity, ruled American politics thereafter. . . .
Czolgosz's evil deed put the country into the hands of a president who believed the business cycle needed regulating and mitigating, not least to prevent the emergence of radicals and to deflect their attention from American institutions. It was a conservative method of thwarting radical threats. Later leaders adopted it, and it kept American capitalism the envy of the world for almost a century afterward.
If, as the British philosopher John Gray claims, "Al Qaeda's closest precursors are the revolutionary anarchists of late 19th-century Europe," then we may learn something from the strategy Roosevelt used to quell that radical threat. Let's hope so.
Let's pass quickly by the fact that the murder of one man, even the President, is somewhat different from 9/11. Let's pass by the fact that the assassin was American. Let's not focus on the fact that the international anarchism had no central organization, no ringleader and no subverted Afghanistan to attack. Let's note only in passing the idiocy of holding up Teddy Roosevelt as a stay-at-home, respect all cultures internationalist. Let's not try to imagine the reaction of those digging through the rubble at Ground Zero if President Bush had used his bullhorn to promise to "address the great 'social problems' and the 'antagonism' of the day . . . by trimming the excesses of unfettered capitalism."
Instead, I refute Rauchway thus. On June 28, 1914, the anarchist Gavrilo Princip killed Archduke Ferdinand, leading directly to the First World War, in which 12 million people died and, by concatenation of events, to the Second World War, in which 55 million people died.
Posted by David Cohen at September 7, 2003 10:46 PMAnd let's not forget that if Roosevelt really was setting out to blunting the Communist menace coming out of Eastern Europe, he did one hell of a rotten job, considering how 16 years later they managed to take control of an entire empire, and spent most of the rest of the 20th Century trying to export their brand of evil to the rest of the world. And they're still around causing trouble.
I tried to read the article, but it requires so many fantasy assumptions that it doesn't even make a good "alternate history."
While Rauchway is out to lunch, I don't understand your what your refutation is refuting. Surely you don't imagine that if Princip hadn't done his nasty deed, all those friendly European contries would have never gone to war, do you? While assassinating the Archduke wasn't exacly a tiny match, it did fall on the driest possible tinder.
Posted by: Kirk Parker at September 7, 2003 11:33 PMEmbarrassing. I would have hoped that there would at least be an argument about how McKinley had brought the US into the Spanish-American War and brutally subdued the Philippines. Err, then of course he might have to note that Teddy Roosevelt certainly made no attempt to free the Philippines from being a US possession against their will.
Posted by: John Thacker at September 7, 2003 11:57 PMHeck, David, it's even easier than that: TR was himself shot by an anarchist in 1912, though for the laudable reason that he shouldn't seek a third term.
http://www.historybuff.com/library/refteddy.html
Posted by: oj at September 8, 2003 1:38 AMKirk --
Would things have turned out worse if Roosevelt had spearheaded an international fight against anarchy?
Posted by: David Cohen at September 8, 2003 8:10 AMThere seems to be a liberal historical project afoot to prove that assassinations have driven US politics. I don't see it.
For one thing, under our system, the government continues much as before. It is not like bumping off a king.
There was considerably more change in the US international position when McKinley succeeded Cleveland than when Roosevelt succeeded McKinley.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at September 8, 2003 4:25 PMThat's interesting, Harry, because over the last 100 years the lefty project in history has been to prove that individuals don't matter and that history is a result of impersonal economic forces. The idea that remarkable people (well, historically men) could change the course of history was derided as the "Big Man" theory. Everyone knew that class explained everything and that seemingly exceptional people were either able to throw off their class consciousness and oppose the oppression of their brothers and sisters (leftist revolutionaries) or dupes and puppets dancing to the tune of their economic masters (American presidents).
Posted by: David Cohen at September 8, 2003 5:38 PM"What Is History?" The subject of innumerable presidential addresses to the American Historical Association.
The historians themselves are seldom consistent, demanding more environmental history and then writing eulogies about JFK.
I think most posters here think the French Revolution was fated to turn out badly, but does anyone think that without Napoleon it would have ended up sending armies to Egypt or Russia?
Among the many wonderful qualities of the U.S. system is that is it mostly impervious to individual brilliance or malice.
I wrote a column about that a few weeks ago, on the unwisdom of requiring more than minimum standards.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at September 8, 2003 6:47 PM"Among the many wonderful qualities of the U.S. system is that is it mostly impervious to individual brilliance or malice."
I think that's right on-target. Also that our federal government is pretty innefficient and set up to thwart easy, streamlined action -- which, except in extraordinary circumstances, is a roundly good thing.
Posted by: Twn at September 8, 2003 7:02 PM