Ken Burns' documentary, "The Roosevelts" on PBS

[mckara]

65. You Haven't Read the Frontier Thesis

Turner's Frontier Thesis changed the course of American history. Read it and you'll understand how the Frontier "purified" democracy and how its lessons affected American foreign policy for the next century. TR and Woodrow Wilson were in concurrence with Turner as were others. Did you ever wonder where JFK got the name for "The Last Frontier"?

As a historian, I try to analyze historical figures objectively. Roosevelt had his flaws, as did most of the ruling class in the late XIXth and early XXth century, if we judge individuals with XXIst century standards. Your criticism of TR has no context to the tenor of the times. We all know that Native Americans lost the battle for control of North American. Who ever said social Darwinism was a good thing? Its battles were fought around the world until concentration camps in Nazi Germany demonstrated its psychotic implications. Ideas come into favor and fade from memories as time exposes their flaws or their virtues gain timeless acceptance as part of human social evolution. Whether you think it was good or bad is irrelevant. It's part of the historical record. People believed in ideas that seemed rational in their eyes, not because they were good or bad people. Most of time they acted with the best intentions. In hindsight, we know the road to hell was paved with good intentions. C'est la vie and history!