The Importance of Individual Citizenship.

Theodore Roosevelt’s Address at the Sorbonne in Paris, France: “Citizenship in a Republic.”

I find myself preferring non-fiction these days. Really, who needs to read fiction when the daily news is full of such outlandish villains and unbelievable twists! Searching for something else, I came upon a speech, titled “Citizenship in a Republic” that Theodore Roosevelt gave at the historic French university of Sorbonne in 1910, a year after he left office.

Roosevelt was struggling then, as we are now, with a growing divide in the Republican Party, particularly between a progressive faction and a conservative wing. The speech he delivered at the Sorbonne was a direct response to these challenges.

This address is famous for a short passage known as “the man in the arena” – often considered a call to action. But I found the rest of the speech – a long critique of politics, wealth, corruption, and fanaticism still relevant today. Uncannily so.

My apologies for the length of this essay, but I would like to highlight a few of his passages for you because they offer a much-needed reminder of the importance of education and engagement in our representative democracy.

The subject of Roosevelt’s address to the French students, professors, and politicians was citizenship. Specifically, the importance of individual citizenship. 

Roosevelt said, “… individual citizenship [is] the one subject of vital importance to you, my hearers, and to me and my countrymen, because you and we are citizens of great democratic republics. A democratic republic such as each of ours—an effort to realize in its full sense government by, of, and for the people—represents the most gigantic of all possible social experiments, the one fraught with greatest possibilities alike for good and for evil. The success of republics like yours and like ours means the glory, and our failure the despair, of mankind; and for you and for us the question of the quality of the individual citizen is supreme. Under other forms of government, under the rule of one man or of a very few men, the quality of the rulers is all-important. If, under such governments, the quality of the rulers is high enough, then the nation may for generations lead a brilliant career and add substantially to the sum of world achievement …. But with you and with us the case is different. With you here, and with us in my own home, in the long run, success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average woman, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of life, and next in those great occasional crises which call for the heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore, it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.”

 

He continues, “… it is essential to good citizenship clearly to understand that there are certain qualities which we in a democracy are prone to admire in and of themselves, which ought by rights to be judged admirable or the reverse solely from the standpoint of the use made of them. Foremost among these I should include two very distinct gifts—the gift of money-making and the gift of oratory.”

Of money-making, Roosevelt warned: “I decline to recognize the mere multimillionaire, the man of mere wealth, as an asset of value to any country, and especially as not an asset to my own country. If he has earned or uses his wealth in a way that makes him of real benefit, of real use … then he does become an asset of worth. But it is the way in which it has been earned or used, and not the mere fact of wealth, that entitles him to the credit …. The man who, having far surpassed the limits of providing for the wants, both of body and mind, of himself and of those depending upon him, then piles up a great fortune, for the acquisition or retention of which he returns no corresponding benefit to the nation as a whole, should himself be made to feel that, so far from being a desirable, he is an unworthy citizen of the community.”

Roosevelt’s thoughts on public speech is particularly relevant now:  “Indeed, it is a sign of marked political weakness in any commonwealth if the people tend to be carried away by mere oratory, if they tend to value words in and for themselves, as divorced from the deeds for which they are supposed to stand. The phrase-maker, the phrase-monger, the ready talker, however great his power, whose speech does not make for courage, sobriety and right understanding, is simply a noxious element in the body politic, and it speaks ill for the public if he has influence over them.”

“To judge a man merely by success is an abhorrent wrong; and if the people at large habitually so judge men, if they grow to condone wickedness because the wicked man triumphs, they show their inability to understand that in the last analysis free institutions rest upon the character of citizenship, and that by such admiration of evil they prove themselves unfit for liberty.”

“Of one man in especial, beyond any one else, the citizens of a republic should beware, and that is of the man who appeals to them to support him on the ground that he is hostile to other citizens of the republic, that he will secure for those who elect him, in one shape or another, profit at the expense of other citizens of the republic. It makes no difference whether he appeals to class hatred or class interest, to religious or anti-religious prejudice. The man who makes such an appeal should always be presumed to make it for the sake of furthering his own interest. The very last thing that an intelligent and self-respecting member of a democratic community should do is to reward any public man because that public man says he will get the private citizen something to which this private citizen is not entitled, or will gratify some emotion or animosity which this private citizen ought not to possess.”

Roosevelt warned that the very last thing an intelligent and self-respecting citizen should do is to reward any such public man, yet in recent years we have rewarded many such men and women. It’s natural to feel frustrated and discouraged.

A friend recently told me that  Wyoming Rising’s efforts in building community, organizing rallies, film discussions, discussion groups, and educational workshops has made no difference, and I couldn’t point to anything specific to rebut the accusation. I’ve been thinking about this, and I believe we have made a difference. The landscape of our state and nation is shifting, our challenge is to avoid sinking into cynicism like my friend, and to answer Roosevelt’s call: if we care for this country, we must help it realize its full potential of government by, of, and for the people—

The internal threats of wealth, corruption, and fanaticism Roosevelt saw in 1910 are the same threats we have today. As he warned, the character of the nation depends on its citizens.

Since Wyoming Rising’s formation 10 years ago, we have focused on building community locally and statewide with the single goal of encouraging good citizenship. Our – yours and my – effort to participate in our communities as educated and engaged citizens makes, perhaps, a small difference in the big picture of our state and nation, but it makes a large personal difference to all individuals who participate. After reading Theodore Roosevelt’s address, I feel even more reassured that we are on the right path.

Thanks for reading,

Renée Tafoya,
Chair
Wyoming Rising

 

Read Roosevelt’s full speech here:

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-sorbonne-paris-france-citizenship-republic

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