The Strenuous Life

Common card · No. 228554

"The Strenuous Life" is a speech delivered by Theodore Roosevelt, then governor of New York and later the 26th president of the United States, in Chicago, Illinois, on April 10, 1899. Delivered during the Philippine–American War (1899–1902), he argued that a life of ease, material comfort, and avoidance of struggle led to national and individual decay, and that Americans must instead embrace strenuous effort, hardship, and martial strife for both individual success and national greatness, while explicitly advocating for American imperialism. Defending the ongoing U.S. colonization of the Philippines asserting that Filipinos were "utterly unfit for self-government" and that without U.S. rule the islands would descend into "savage anarchy." He argued that if the United States failed to govern the Philippines, "some stronger and more manful race" would have to do so. He condemned anti-imperialists who appealed to "liberty" and the "consent of the governed" as "timid" men who refused to "play...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Taken by an unknown media photographer on Aug.15, 1899, Public domain