This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way.
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This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a camp miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Forth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history. It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party Tickets Now for $17.76 at America250.org/slash LA.
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It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts.
Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America. Do you want to find a stress free way to buy your next car? Start at CarMax and shop your way. And if you want to browse with confidence, get prequalified online with no impact on your credit score and shop cars within your budget, from luxury cars to family rides.
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Bill McClay, author of Land of Hope. After an assassin's bullet took down President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt would ascend to an office that was never supposed to be his. The result was transformative for the nation in a way our founders wouldn't have recognized. Let's get into the story. Take it away, Bill.
Uh There's some mythology about the notion of Roosevelt as a trust buster. The fact is, Roosevelt favored the consolidation method of regulation, and that view would only grow stronger during his term in office. He was not averse to using his power to go after what he considered bad trusts. But the good ones, he let them be.
So, what decided the good trusts from the bad? That power would reside in the executive branch. An outfit called the Bureau of Corporations. They would essentially serve as senior partners in every big business in America. This was a staggering departure from the way Americans did business and government.
Roosevelt would win reelection in 1904 by a significant margin, with railroad regulation a big part of his campaign. After some tough legislative battles, Roosevelt pushed Congress to pass the Hepburn Act. Which gave the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to set what they considered just and reasonable railroad rates. It also gave the Commission power over ferries, bridges, and terminals. Other accomplishments of Roosevelt's second term had to do with consumer protection and conservation.
Neither of the issues had ever been of concern to prior presidents. What prompted the consumer protection concerns was Opton Sinclair's expose of the meat packing industry. a dramatic novel called The Jungle. In it were macabre and awful stories that frightened the public. Stories of workers falling into meat processing tanks and being ground up.
along with the animal parts.
Soon after the release of Sinclair's sensational book, the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act were passed. Roosevelt had a deep concern for the conservation cause too, not just of natural resources, but a new way of thinking about natural resources. Birth by his time in the Dakotas, which helped him heal from deep grief. He saw the land itself as a natural resource. He hoped to preserve as much of that in future generations.
And saw preservation and conservation, not just as a social good, but a moral imperative. He saw America as heirs to a sacred trust. and the great American landscapes a great common trust. To achieve his goals, Roosevelt established the U.S. Forest Service.
and also signed into law the creation of five national parks. and also established over ninety bird preserves. 150 national forests, including America's very first national forest, Shoshone National Forest in northwest Wyoming, which today covers 2.4. million acres of pristine rugged terrain. The total area that Roosevelt would end up preserving and protecting was an astonishing two hundred thirty million acres.
This would be Roosevelt's proudest achievement. But there were differing views about what preservation and conservation meant. ones that collided with some prominent environmentalists of the day. Roosevelt and his pal Gifford Pinchot, America's first leader of the Forest Service, believed as progressives. as rational progressives.
that their efforts were a way to better the condition of mankind. But they were not pure preservationists. One dispute with a prominent naturalist named John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club, one of the leading environmental organizations of our time, was representative of the differing objectives of progressives on the one hand and purists on the other. One big battle had to do with the creation of a water reserve in Yosemite National Park. Which could help the city of San Francisco.
Muir favored a hands-off approach. They wanted to leave the national park untouched. By human hands. Muir would call Roosevelt and Pinchot temple destroyers who had a perfect contempt for nature. Posterity treated Roosevelt more kindly.
It was possible to serve Core human needs like the reservoir in Yosemite without destroying what God had created. and mankind preserved. There was a balance. that needed to be struck, and Roosevelt and the progressives. understood how to do it.
Not content with the sweeping changes to America he'd already made. Roosevelt continued to press for even more change. He grew more harsh in thought and language, attacking what he could call the malefactors of great wealth. portraying them as greedy, rapacious, and worthy of scorn. Roosevelt's newfound rage worried the more conservative old guard of the Republican Party, who worked to thwart Roosevelt's efforts in the final months of his administration.
Well, Roosevelt would run off to Africa for a year to hunt big game and collect specimens for the Smithsonian and American Museum of Natural History. But he picked, before he left, he picked his successor. William Howard Taft. Tafel is also a supporter of the Square Deal. He would go on to beat William Jennings Bryan handily in a third run, but it didn't take long for Roosevelt to become dissatisfied with Taft's performance as president.
This was not just a personal beef between two powerful men. It represented a deep schism within the Republican Party. Between the old guard and its new progressive wing. and Roosevelt continued his attacks against the Constitution. forcefully advocating for ways to make it easier to amend the Constitution.
By a simple majority vote, rather than the more cumbrous and difficult process. Our founding fathers had specified. For good reason. Roosevelt chose to run against half. for the Republican nomination.
When he failed in that endeavor, He chose to do something even bolder.
Some would say wilder. Maybe more irresponsible. He chose to run. Independently. And you've been listening to Dr.
Bill McClay. And this is another installment of our Story of Us, the Story of America series. And he's the author. of land of hope. And what a story he's telling about Roosevelt, who, as we learn early, was not against trusts, but wanted to separate the good ones from the bad ones.
And this was the kind of government power that the founders would have just. Found abhorrent, he just formed a government department dedicated to making that decision. What a ton of power he was seizing. He also set up commissions to set up railroad rates and other transportation rates, and set up the consumer protection that we now know. Thanks to in large measure of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
But perhaps his greatest legacy, Roosevelt's, we learn, was his conservation mindset. in a very new kind. He saw the land itself. is a natural resource, but he wasn't an absolutist. He was practical and pragmatic about how to best preserve the land while taking care of the needs of the public as well.
And last but not least, he established the U.S. Forest Service. and five national parks. And if you've ever been to that part of Wyoming, and I have, visiting Shoshone National Forest That is a Roosevelt legacy. Two million plus acres in just that forest alone.
When we come back, more of the remarkable story of Teddy Roosevelt. as he runs through a third party. Here on Our American Story. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years.
And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q.
That's usmint.gov slash sq. E-M-I-U. This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't-miss Fourth of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Forth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history.
It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party tickets now for $17.76 at America250.org/slash LA. It's America's 250th, but you deserve some presents too. Simon Malls, mills, and premium outlets have can't-miss sales July 3rd to 5th. Join Simon Plus, our new rewards program, for free, and get 2.5 times the points in addition to extra savings, cashback, and offers that also work at shopsimon.com.
Grab the fam, head to a Simon Center, and make it a day for the books. It's a celebration thing. Sign up today at SimonPlus.com. Rewards program. Terms apply.
See SimonPlus.com for details. Wasn't that delicious?
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Visit wellsfargo.com/slash active cash. Terms apply. I'm Glenn Washington, host of Snap Judgment, the award-winning storytelling podcast from KQED. Every week, Snap deals a new card, like the girl whose sister was a monkey, the man who lived in the woods for 30 years, or the woman who snuck her lover out of prison in a dog crate. Pick a card, any card.
Snap Judgment from KQED, new episodes every Thursday wherever you get your podcast. And we return to Our American Stories and with Dr. Bill McClay, author of Land of Hope. When we last left off, Bill was telling us about Theodore Roosevelt's characteristically bold decision to run as a third-party candidate. in the election of 1912.
Let's return to the story. He would drape the presidential run. In religious themes and language, especially his fiery convention speech. punctuated by these words We stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord. He described his sweeping regulatory reforms as a rebuttal.
to what he described as the invisible government. of special interest groups. The Democratic Party did not have a clear frontrunner, and it would take 46 ballots to nominate the relatively unknown Princeton University professor, later president of Princeton. and former governor of New Jersey for two years. Woodrow Wilson.
He was a progressive, no doubt, but an antitrust version, with scant political experience. His slogan was a stark contrast to Roosevelt's new nationalism. Wilson instead chose the new freedom. He believed that the federal government should break up the big trusts that dominated American business and establish rules of the road that allowed competition to thrive and free enterprise to serve the interests of the people. Wilson in the end wanted the markets to work.
and to work on behalf of the American people. He'd studied and written for many years about the ways in which one might reform our federal government. He was in agreement with Roosevelt that the Constitution was an outdated operating system. He believed deeply that our government and its day-to-day operations should be constructed on a more fluid and evolving basis, rather than being anchored down by the archaic rules contained within the Constitution with all its checks and balances. Much of that thinking, this evolutionary approach to governing our nation, sprang from Darwin's biological theories as interpreted.
for social and political purposes. Government should be free to adapt to the times. As Wilson noted in his 1898 book, The State. Government does now whatever experience permits. or the time's demand.
Um Wilson wasn't dissatisfied with the Constitution alone. He also had an argument with the Declaration of Independence, the principal premise being that natural rights. and the fundamental rights of human being spring from God. and not from kings or government or from any human source. In short, Wilson believed that the Declaration had lost its significance.
Because it was the product of a specific moment in time. though he still did hold close to Jefferson's call for a new government based on the consent of the governed. This was an historic election, the election of 1912, and the very first time in American history. when a third party candidate had any chance of pulling out a win. What would happen was far more predictable.
The split in the Republican Party created a wide open lane for the Democrat. With Wilson winning by a massive margin, garnering 415 electoral votes to Roosevelt's 88 Taft. came in a distant third with a mere eight electoral votes.
Well, it didn't take long for Wilson to get to work. The very first thing he did was lower tariffs, Which in turn created budgetary and revenue shortfalls. To make up for these lost government receipts, Wilson proposed a bill creating a federal income tax. He also pushed for a strong central banking system, which hadn't been a part of American life since the presidency of Andrew Jackson and his war against the Bank of the United States. Wilson's efforts would lead to the creation of the Federal Reserve.
There would be many substantive reforms in a wide range of American life, from farms to railroads and child labor laws as well. It was by any measure. A very impressive record. But there were even more profound changes to the Constitution under Wilson. The 17th Amendment was a major structural change to how our founders believed we should choose our U.S.
Senators. The founders had believed that senators should be selected by the state legislatures. The amendment gave it to the power of the respective states through direct elections. not the legislatures. Wilson's many wins represented a moment in time in which progressivism appeared to be ascendant, dominant.
But there were serious problems with the progressive record under Wilson. There was at best an intransigence when it came to minorities and an outright hostility to racial minorities. African Americans, and sheer lack of respect for the Declaration of Independence. And our Constitution. Reformers like Wilson wanted to get things done, and our Constitution makes it difficult to do so with the checks and balances our founders saw as a design feature.
Not a design flaw. They wanted to disperse power. They favored the separation of the House and the Senate. They favored separation of the other branches, the executive branch and the executive. And the judiciary.
And of course, Power was also dispersed to the states. adding another layer of protection. around the idea that we cannot have too much concentrated power in one place. All because our founders had a view of human nature best represented by James Madison's historic quote in Federalist No. 51.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, Neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
Well, needless to say, Men are not angels. It is understandable that reformers like Roosevelt and Wilson would get frustrated by the limitations set before them by the Constitution and the Declaration. It was hubris of them. It was arrogance of them. To toss aside the profound brilliance of the of our founding documents.
in the name of reform. As the great pundit G K Chesterton put it best, cautioning reformers with this observation. Before you tear down a fence, Be sure to first understand the purpose. that the fence was erected to serve. in the first place.
The fact was, progressivism had reached its zenith in American political life. But no movement. As we've learned in our effort to tell the story of America, No movement lasts forever. Wilson's ideas. Wilson's theory of government and the policies that advocated them were about to face profound challenges.
and from a much bigger arena. The world stage. and world politics. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Monty Montgomery. And a special thanks to Dr.
Bill McClay. He's a professor at Hillsdale College and Hillsdale College, by the way, as always. is a proud sponsor of Our American Stories, and we're proud to partner with them. Go to hillsdale.edu and my goodness, the free online courses there. Will be better than any college education you could have ever had, except, of course, at Hillsdale.
They're free. And they're for the family to use and use again and again. Again, go to hillsdale.edu. And Dr. Bill McClay is also the author of Land of Hope.
A terrific book, go and order it at Amazon at your local library, wherever you get your books. The story of Theodore Roosevelt and the rise of the Progressive Party. Woodrow Wilson's rise here on our American stories. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years.
And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q.
That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a Camp Miss Fourth of July concert happening at the Los Angeles. Angelus Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Forth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history.
It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party Tickets Now for $17.76 at America250.org/slash LA. It's America's 250th, but you deserve some presents too. Simon Malls, mills, and premium outlets have can't-miss sales July 3rd to 5th. Join Simon Plus, our new rewards program for free and get 2.5 times the points in addition to extra savings, cashback, and offers that also work at shopsimon.com.
Grab the fam, head to a Simon Center, and make it a day for the books. It's a celebration thing. Sign up today at SimonPlus.com. Rewards program terms apply. See SimonPlus.com for details.
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