America: stop being stupid; or, Teddy Roosevelt knows nothing about immigration policy

[Ronald Kephart]

On 2/9/08 10:02 AM, "Harold Schiffman" <hfsclpp at gmail.com> wrote (quoting
Teddy Roosevelt):

> "We have room for but one language here, and that is the English languageŠ and
> we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American
> people."
> 
Roosevelt was even scarier than this. In Rogue States (South End Press
2000, p. 85) Noam Chomsky comments that "Theodore Roosevelt [...] was one of
the most extraordinary racist, raving lunatics of contemporary history. He
was greatly admired by Hitler, and for good reason. His writings are
shocking to read."

I wanted to check it out for myself, so I went to our library and found a
couple of collections of TR's writings. They are indeed shocking. The
following comes from Theodore Roosevelt: An American Mind, A Selection from
his Writings, edited by Mario R. DiNunzio (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1994, pp 62-3).

"Whether the whites won the land by treaty, by armed conquest, or, as was
actually the case, by a mixture of both, mattered comparatively little so
long as the land was won. It was all-important that it should be won, for
the benefit of civilization and in the interests of mankind. It is, indeed,
a warped, perverse, and silly morality which would forbid a course of
conquest that has turned whole continents into the seats of mighty and
flourishing civilized nations. All men of sane and wholesome thought must
dismiss with impatient contempt the pleas that these continents should be
reserved for the use of scattered savage tribes, whose life was but a few
degrees less meaningless, squalid, and ferocious than that of the wild
beasts with whom they held joint ownership."

And, a little further along:

"The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it
is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler
who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt
to him. American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tartar, New
Zealander and Maori- in each case the victor, horrible though many of his
deeds are, has laid deep the foundations for the future greatness of a
mighty people."

The "mighty people" he refers to are best exemplified by the Germanic
peoples who, in conquering Britain and then North America, were fulfilling
some kind of divine destiny; no wonder Hitler admired him.

Ron