Leave Teddy Roosevelt alone!

TR picked a number of fights with conservative Republicans, fight-picking being his favorite sport. But Roosevelt hated socialism. “It would spell sheer destruction,” he said. “It would produce grosser wrong and outrage, fouler immorality, than any existing system.” Modern corporate capitalism, he believed, was inevitable, even admirable. But he also believed that overly centralized and unaccountable power in a capitalist system creates destructive clashes of labor and capital, rich and poor. So he busted monopolistic trusts, imposed health standards on filthy meatpacking plants and promoted a more professional, merit-based civil service…

All those few, however, seemed to be in attendance at CPAC, determined to sharpen an ideological debate. In the name of constitutional purity, they propose a great undoing. Not just the undoing of Obamaism. Undo Medicare and Social Security. Undo the expansive American global commitments that proceeded from World War II and the Cold War. Undo progressive-era economic regulations. Undo the executive power grab that preserved the union. Undo it all — until America is left with a government appropriate to an isolated, 18th-century farming republic.

This is a proposal for time travel, not a policy agenda. The federal government could not shed these accumulated responsibilities without massive suffering and global instability — a decidedly radical, unconservative approach to governing.