Bush's Big Gov't Leads to Backlash Against ... Teddy Roosevelt?

[Lemur]

Looks as though conservatives have had enough of big government conservatism, and they're not gonna let Teddy Roosevelt do it any more!

From the American Spectator:

As Roosevelt said in his "New Nationalism" speech in Kansas in 1910, he sought "a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country." In short, he was no conservative. Theodore Roosevelt was a big government man, and many of our current troubles can be traced to him.

From Lew Rockwell:

Socialists of all stripes praise TR’s "conservation" policies, nevertheless, because he strenuously opposed the privatization of government-controlled land. Private property is the mortal enemy of socialism. In reality, TR’s "conservation" policies were just another Republican party mercantilist scheme. Mostly western "lobbying groups hoped to enrich themselves with . . . free dams, free waterway improvements, cheap water, cheap timber, cheap access to grazing lands, and other goodies, at somebody else’s expense."