By Stephen Smoot
In April of 1910, Theodore Roosevelt crossed the Atlantic to bring some New World wisdom to share with the Old. The speech is called both “Citizenship in a Republic” for its topic and “The Man in the Arena” for its vivid imagery of the active citizen living a productive life for himself, his family, his community, and his country.
Citizenship means more than being a legal citizen. That serves as the general theme of a speech that tackles several different important areas of life. Since the start of the American Republic, citizens have understood that the blessings of liberty and prosperity do not simply fall as rain into cisterns below. A true citizen understands that those blessings are secured by hard work, by self-discipline, by thrifty budgeting, and by preparing for the worst while also hoping for the best.
Roosevelt went one step further. He shared that “the life of material gain, whether for a nation or an individual, is of value only as a foundation, only as there is added to it the uplift that comes from devotion to loftier ideals.” In his time, Andrew Carnegie came to the United States with very little. He worked hard and wisely, building up United States Steel into an international titan.
He then spent most of his accumulated fortune in his later years paying to construct and fill local public libraries. Each adorned the streets as an architectural masterpiece while the books inside edified the mind. One cannot imagine all the good those books did to inspire millions of minds over many decades. Cornelius Vanderbilt constructed an institution of higher learning, as did Henry Gassaway Davis and Stephen B. Elkins.
That leads into one of Roosevelt’s other points, that “the average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics (he referred to both those of the United States and France) are to succeed.” He applied an apt metaphor, stating that “the stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source.”
If the average citizen works hard, conducts himself with self-discipline and respect, and follows practical wisdom instead of intemperate emotionalism, the body politic will naturally give rise to a representative republic that functions well. “Therefore,” he said, “it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high.”
Yet that standard does not equate at all merely to intellect and education. The best citizens in this perspective are often farmers, tradesmen, and others who may not have attended a formal university, but whose life experience has taught them wisdom and practicality. Roosevelt warns more against “the man of learning, the man of lettered leisure” who would “pose to himself and others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are one.”
“The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer,” stated Roosevelt, who added that “there is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty,” especially “a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform.”
Usually a person such as Roosevelt described “permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him to do the rough work of a workaday world.” Such a person silos him or herself from people who do such work every day, yet do not shrink from spinning fantasies about the lifestyles of such people and how their peculiar ideals could save them all, even from themselves.
Additionally, he saves his most strict criticism for the person “who wishes to do great things for humanity in the abstract, but who cannot keep his wife in comfort or educate his children.” Though likely not thinking of them specifically, he accurately described the fathers of Communism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who refused to work and whose families were kept alive via help from their business-owning parents.
Social media has given voice to the opposite of “the man in the arena,” especially those whose work and position mean that he or she must make tough decisions regularly, taking care of those who work under them and the responsibilities of the organization as a whole.
Says Roosevelt, “the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.”
On the other hand, social media hammers the “man in the arena” mostly because the individual is visible. People sit behind screens and lash out with their keyboards at individuals regardless of whether they even understand the underlying issues or not.
For example, the German World Cup soccer superfan Freddy deactivated the X account he used to share his joy in traveling through small towns and cities, mostly in the South. The vitriol directed at him came from a minority of users, but forced him to take it down because it was no longer fun to share his pure joy at everyday Americana.
He was, however, rewarded with an invitation to join President Donald Trump at the White House.
More locally, some have chosen to attack Governor Patrick Morrissey for the expense of putting together a better-than-first class celebration of America 250. This includes the largest “observation wheel” in the world temporarily set on the Capitol grounds.
There is something wonderful about West Virginians getting to experience something both grand and rare, to get a chance to participate in, or even just observe, something grandparents will be telling grandchildren about decades from now.
Slamming the Governor for bringing such a celebration to a once in a lifetime event because it costs money is the exact same as bashing the City of Charleston for spending much more on their iconic Sternwheel Regatta when they have a homeless problem. Or stating that no town, city, or county should spend funds on community festivals, fairs, or celebrations because those resources could be used elsewhere.
Social media and podcasting makes every human being, potentially, a journalist in the most loose form. People who report news in any aspect can be said to be practicing it, even if they themselves do not think so. What Roosevelt stated about the evils of journalism, social media has amplified with the speed of distribution. “Mendacity, slander, sensationalism, inanity, vapid triviality, all are potent factors for the debauchery of the public mind and conscience.” Social media amplifies vindictiveness without calling out for accuracy. Effect is measured in rage stoked, not truths told.
And no one is more acutely aware of that than the Jewish people of the United States, now actively persecuted in many major cities and on the campuses of too many colleges and universities who call themselves “elite.” If a college or university tolerates hatred of Jews, they are protectors of the most mindless ignorance in modern civilization and no longer can call themselves “elites.”
Citizenship, versus simply being a citizen, means that a person works to better themselves and their families because prosperity from productivity is the most sustainable measure of progress.
That said, if the values of the average citizen fall into laziness, complaint, and bitterness, that of the nation will as well.
The lesson from this is that a good citizen will be guided by wisdom, life experience, and learning. Taking cues from social media, podcasts, or other sources that would tend to maximize emotion over facts, bitterness over reasonable expectations of life, and lashing out without understanding, will undermine and erode the good that positive citizenship produces.
Also, the traditional values that Americans have used to elevate themselves in their lives remain true today. Conditions change, the pathways to success change, but the fundamentals do not. Work hard, respect yourself, maintain self-discipline, and resist the temptation to be resentful of those who have enjoyed more success in some field.
That is what a good citizen looks like and they form the societies on which great nations are constructed.