In an amusing exchange, Edmund Morris, probably best known to educated Americans as a biographer of Ronald Reagan, went nuts when braindead fourth-rate pundits Bob Schieffer and Arianna Huffington kept asking him idiotic questions about how various long-dead historical figures would feel about current events in America. Morris rightly thought the whole thing was stupid and said so, using the F word.
He then went on a diatribe about how Americans are lazy and obese:
Morris went on to criticize the American people, who he said “are insensitive to foreign sensibilities, who are lazy, obese, complacent and increasingly perplexed as to why we are losing our place in the world to people who are more dynamic than us and more disciplined.”
Knowing Morris, I highly doubt these comments stem from any kind of Menckenian individualism. Rather, I suspect that Morris is one of those war-crazed neocon types who thinks that various iron-fisted militarists like the British imperials and the Spartans should be emulated. Hence, the stuff about “discipline.”
So the whole exchange just helps to illustrate that shows like “Face the Nation” or “Meet the Press” are a complete waste of time. Who watches these shows? I mean, other than octogenarians?
But to answer the question posed to Morris: ““What would Teddy Roosevelt think of today’s politics, Edmund?””
I can channel ol’ Teddy for you right now and tell you what he would say were he to survey the political scene in America:
Wow, America has really gone down hill since I died. I can’t believe that you people let Negroes hold public office! For shame. Also, someone told me that you let the dusky races of Central America have nominal control over my great Panama Canal. The first think you should do is whip those coolies into shape and take that back. In fact, I hear there are Chinamen in warships patrolling those waters. If you’re not careful, Anglo-Saxons won’t rule the world. I shudder to think of such a world. And worse, I heard that eugenics has fallen out of favor in America. How are you supposed to wipe out the undesirables if you don’t forcibly sterilize all the weak and the Colored people?
Morris went on to criticize the American people, who he said “are insensitive to foreign sensibilities, who are lazy, obese, complacent and increasingly perplexed as to why we are losing our place in the world to people who are more dynamic than us and more disciplined.”
He’s not wrong, just unabashedly honest, like Dr. Gregory House – no holds barred, take no prisoners. We can’t even show our own neighbors courtesy in the cinema by not yakking thru a movie, of course we have no real idea why we are losing traction as a world power.
Discipline has really gone by the wayside. I remember my 4th/5th-grade teacher, far from being a Spartan or British Imperialist, he was a former US military man who believed in discipline and a well-regulated classroom. The school was experimental, so divided into traditional classrooms vs. “open concept/independent study” schooling. He might have been strict, but his content was leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else. At age 8, I was introduced to the Dow Jones, higher mathematics, geology, geography, agriculture, the importance of spelling and grammar and being organized, and many other subjects. Lessons were not just academic, our routine field trips into actual fields to collect plant samples and tadpoles and just spend time outside while we were small was a huge lesson. When I first learned I would be in his class, I was terrified by the rumors of his harshness; when he retired at the end of my 5th grade, even at age 10 I knew the teaching world really lost something. To this day I am grateful for Joseph Raymond Johnson and the lessons I learned.