The First Progressive-Our Downfall Begins

Born on October 27, 1858, to a well to do family at 28 East 20th Street, New York City, Theodore Roosevelt at the age of 42, would go on to become the youngest president of the United State. He would also become the first Progressive President of this country.

Roosevelt was a frail child. His asthma was so bad that his father would take him outside and carry him up and down the block in front of their home until the attack was over. The senior Roosevelt would convert an area in their home into a gym for young Teddy. There Roosevelt would exercise lifting weights. He would grow in strength and he would become a member of the Harvard rowing team upon entering that institution. Along with great physical strength was his mental strength. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the honor society fraternity, and graduated magna cum laude in 1880.

Roosevelt would have an illustrious career. He would serve in the New York Assembly. He was a naturalist, historian, writer, explorer, author and cowboy. He would suffer an unbelievable tragedy with the death of his mother and wife who died on the same day in the same house. That would lead to his cowboy career in the American west and put him on the path to conservation of the nation's resources. Roosevelt, however, would also become the nation's first Progressive thus being responsible for initiating a policy of big government regulation.

Teddy became president because of the assassination of William McKinley. In 1898, McKinley took aim at the large, monopolistic companies being created in America. Carnegie, Rockefeller, Schwab and many other industrialists came under the scrutiny of the U.S. Industrial Commission of Trusts. Roosevelt would pick up on the businesses, now know as Trusts, and would set out to break them up and regulate them through the government. Indeed, Roosevelt gained quite a reputation as a "Trust Buster" breaking up 44 such industries during his time in office. Though not the biggest of the Trust Busters, that was a title won by William H. Taft with 90 Trust Bustings, Roosevelt put this nation on a path still taken by those who wish to return us to the day when the government told us what our rights were much like the King of England did prior to the Revolutionary War.

Roosevelt brought the presence of government regulation into the lives of countless Americans and American industries. Big Oil, Big Steel, Big Food, Big Drug, no one was safe from his scrutiny. He even proposed universal health care and national health insurance. Big brother and Big government had come on the scene.

As you go to the polls in this primary and general election season take a look at the beginning of the turn about for America. For the past almost 11 decades we, as a nation, have been regressing. We are losing out personal liberties while telling our government that we want health care to be a right. We can't figure out why college is so expensive while we tell our government that we want more grants and loans for college. We tell our government to give us more of the same failed policies like social security, medicare and Head Start. Khrushchev told us years ago that they would bury us. I believe that we are going to do the job for them and they will conquer us without a shot being fired only this time it will be the enemy within, those politicians who call themselves Progressive. The liberal chickens have come home to their roots.