Essay Questions

Explicate Roosevelt’s ideology in “The Strenuous Life”.

Roosevelt unambiguously ratifies America’s immersion in international dealings, “Our proper conduct toward the tropic islands we have wrested from Spain is merely the form which our duty has taken at the moment. Of course we are bound to handle the affairs of our own household well. We must see that there is civic honesty, civic cleanliness, civic good sense in our home administration of city, State, and nation. We must strive for honesty in office, for honesty toward the creditors of the nation and of the individual; for the widest freedom of individual initiative where possible, and for the wisest control of individual initiative where it is hostile to the welfare of the many. But because we set our own household in order we are not thereby excused from playing our part in the great affairs of the world. A man’s first duty is to his own home, but he is not thereby excused from doing his duty to the State; for if he fails in this second duty it is under the penalty of ceasing to be a freeman.” Roosevelt validates America’s partaking in global questions through military accomplishments that would oblige the deployment of the American Army. America’s global involvement would be contributory in perpetuating harmony in other parts of the world. America is an authoritative entity with the latent of ameliorating the circumstances in other nations. Roosevelt deems that America should be accountable for other parts of the world because doing so would be gratifying its intrinsic accountability to the entire mankind. Non-responsiveness to global matters would be a pointer of America’s negligence.

How is the notion of peace paradoxical? What is the implication of the paradox? – “Expansion and Peace”

Roosevelt concedes, “Peace is a great good; and doubly harmful, therefore, is the attitude of those who advocate it in terms that would make it synonymous with selfish and cowardly shrinking from warring against the existence of evil. The wisest and most far-seeing champions of peace will ever remember that, in the first place, to be good it must be righteous, for unrighteous and cowardly peace may be worse than any war; and, in the second place, that it can often be obtained only at the cost of war.” Literally, ‘goodness’ and ‘harmfulness’ are not comparable; consequently, peace would not be predicted to be synchronously ‘good and harmful.’ The paradox deduces that evil-linked peace is an exhibition of cowardice. Roosevelt deconstructs the paradox to accentuate that war and peace are not mutually exclusive: “Again, peace may come only through war. There are men in our country who seemingly forget that at the outbreak of the Civil War the great cry raised by the opponents of the war was the cry for peace.” Had there not been the Civil War, there would not have been venerable concord between the ‘Union and the Confederate’. Accordingly, some conditions oblige the incidence of war for armistice to supervene subsequently.