R. Haugen: Rick, Just What Would Teddy Say?

To the Editor:

Last summer my girlfriend, her 10-year-old daughter and I went to the Black Hills of South Dakota.

On the way home, I asked her daughter she learned most about the area. She said it was the lighting ceremony at Mt. Rushmore explaining why each of the presidents was chosen. She knew it made sense why Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln are there but wasn’t quite sure why Roosevelt was chosen until now.

She said “He had the foresight back then so average kids like me could enjoy our national
treasures the way he did.”

Here in North Dakota, Teddy Roosevelt is known as a rugged individualist, a leader of the Rough Riders, a Badlands rancher, and the 26th President of the United States. We are honored that our only national park is named after him.

Roosevelt was much more than that. During his tenure in the White House from 1901 to 1909, he designated 150 National Forests, the first 51 Federal Bird Reservations, 5 National Parks, the first 18 National Monuments, the first 4 National Game Preserves, and the first 21 Reclamation Projects.

He essentially put the word ‘CONSERVE’ into conservatism. In 1912, he founded the Progressive Party of 1912 with a ‘Square Deal’ domestic program focusing upon three basic ideas: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection.

Today’s Republicans would kick him out of the party and labeled him an extreme left socialist liberal; a tree hugging fascist land grabber; and an anti-capitalist Wall Street basher for those positions and actions.

Putting oil wells in and around our national parks to finance Social Security is about as smart as knocking the faces off Mt. Rushmore to extract more Black Hills gold to help finance the program.

That’s about as brilliant an idea as Rick Berg’s sponsorship of a bill to allow large banks to sell their customers’ personal information. In 26 years, is there one single bill Rick Berg sponsored that has passed? No, because they were bad ideas.

What is really sad is how Rick Berg, a member of the Theodore Roosevelt Foundation, wants to disgrace our 26th president and the lands and resources he worked so hard to preserve for future generations.

And now he wants to represent us at the federal level? Isn’t that like trusting British Petroleum to
clean up the Gulf of Mexico?

Rick, just what would Teddy say?

-Robert Haugen
Fargo