Leave Teddy Roosevelt alone!

History is a neverending debate, but while everyone is entitled to their own opinion, no one is entitled to their own facts. TR’s contemporary critics should ask themselves whether big-business monopolies represent the triumph of free-market capitalism or its corruption—because open competition, the essence of free markets, is protected by reasonable regulation. When China’s exportation of toys made with poisonous levels of lead is rightly criticized by talk-radio hosts like Beck, it’s worth remembering that U.S. government regulations are what protect American consumers from the same abuse. All government action is not a usurpation of individual freedom—it’s a matter of striking the right balance.

But balance seems too subtle a concept for all-or-nothing absolutists, especially when they are trying to lead a conservative populist revival that characterizes centrist policies as a slippery slope toward socialism and then communism. Rather than trying to purge Teddy Roosevelt from the party rolls, today’s GOP leaders would do well to remember TR’s example and his advice: “We Republicans must hold the just balance and set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other.”