Daniel Ruddy > Quotes

“Roosevelt was a Hamiltonian--a conservative in the eighteenth century sense of the word. Rather than urging the American people to "pursue happiness," as Jefferson the liberal did in the Declaration of Independence, Roosevelt admonished them to live the "Strenuous Life" of duty, toil, and strife, and to avoid "ignoble ease"--advice Hamilton would have heartily approved.”
― Daniel Ruddy, Theodore the Great

“About the same time, Ronald Reagan stepped into the Oval Office and began to pursue policies that reminded many Americans of TR's Big Stick diplomacy. Roosevelt, who had doubled the size of the navy and sent his Great White Fleet on a voyage around the world, surely would have approved of Reagan's plans for a six-hundred ship navy, dramatically increased military spending, and eagerness to challenge the Soviet Union. These policies fit perfectly with TR's philosophy of deterrence (which Reagan expressed succinctly as "peace through strength"), and they were promoted in the same unequivocal moral terms--the American "shining city on a hill" versus the Soviet "evil empire"--that Roosevelt habitually used when describing enemies, foreign and domestic.”
― Daniel Ruddy, Theodore the Great