Fear God and Take Your Own Part
Based on The Book by Theodore Teddy, Roosevelt

It is June 4, 2023. Teddy wrote the manual for healing America in 1915, one hundred and eight years ago. Every principle in Teddy’s book outlines the antidote America needs to heal her wounds and return to being a “Great God-Fearing Nation.” I suggest everyone needs to read the 400 pages. You can go to this link and read Teddy’s book online for free at:

https://archive.org/details/feargodandtakeyo00roosuoft/page/xii/mode/2up?view=theater

Since I was just a boy, I greatly respected Teddy Roosevelt. A huge bronze statue of Teddy, the Rough Rider, is in Roosevelt Park, just five minutes from our house. Young boys would try climbing on Teddy’s horse with him and ride off to a grand adventure. I am doing more research into Teddy’s life, his faith, his leadership, and notable quotables. I was raised by Teddy Roosevelt. We would tell stories that haunted Teddy’s stature in the park. The most prominent story was the statue is Teddy; he was riding along the river that runs through the park. Teddy and his horse slipped on the muddy bank into the mouse river. When they pulled Teddy out, he and the horse were forever encased in his bronze statue coffin. A chilling story.

 

The concept of Fearing God seems antithetic (in opposition) to a loving God. But Teddy explains what fearing God is in this excerpt of the book:

Fear God; and take your own part! Fear God in the true sense of the word, means love God, respect God, honor God; and all of this can only be done by loving our neighbor, treating him justly and mercifully, and in all ways endeavoring to protect him from Injustice and cruelty; thus obeying, as far as our human Frailty will permit, the great and immutable law of righteousness.

We fear God when we do justice to and demand justice for the men within our own borders. We are false to the teachings of righteousness if we do not such Justice and demand such justice. We must do it to the weak and we must do it to the strong. We do not fear God if we show mean envy and hatred of those who are better off than we are; and still less do we fear God if we show a base arrogance towards and selfish lack of consideration for those who are less well off. We must apply the same standard of conduct alike to man and to woman, to rich man and to poor man, to employer and employee. We must organize our social and industrial life so as to secure a reasonable equality of opportunity for all men to show the stuff that is in them, and a reasonable division among those engaged in industrial work of the reward for that industrial work, a division which shall take into account all the qualities that contribute to the necessary success. We must demand honesty, justice, mercy, truthfulness, in our dealings with one another within our own borders. Outside of our own borders we must treat other nations as we would wish to be treated in return, judging each in any given crisis as we ourselves ought to be judged–that is, by our conduct in that crisis. If they do ill, we show that we fear God when we sternly bear testimony against them and oppose them in any way and to whatever extent the needs require. If they do well, we must not wrong them ourselves. Finally, if we are really devoted to a lofty ideal we must in so far as our strength permits aid them if they are wronged by others. When we sit idly by while Belgium is being overwhelmed, and rolling up our eyes prattle with unctuous self-righteousness about “the duty of neutrality,” we show that we do not really fear God; on the contrary, we show an odious fear of the devil, and a mean readiness to serve him.

But in addition to fearing God, it is necessary that we should be able and ready to take our own part. The man who cannot take his own part is a nuisance in the community, a source of weakness, an encouragement to wrongdoers and an added burden to the men who wish to do what is right. If he cannot take his own part, then somebody else has to take it for him; and this means that his weakness and cowardice and inefficiency place an added burden on some other man and make that other man’s strength by just so much of less avail to the community as a whole. No man can take the part of any one else unless he is able to take his own part. This is just as true of nations as of men. A nation that cannot take its own part is at times almost as fertile a source of mischief in the world at large as is a nation which does wrong to others, for its very existence puts a premium on such wrongdoing.Therefore, a nation must fit itself to defend its honor and interest against outside aggression; and this necessarily means that in a free democracy every man fit for citizenship must be trained so that he can do his full duty to the nation in war no less than in peace.

Unless we are thorough-going Americans and unless our patriotism is part of the very fiber of our being, we can neither serve God nor take our own part. Whatever may be the case in an infinitely remote future, at present no people can render any service to humanity unless as a people they feel an intense sense of national cohesion and solidarity. The man who loves other nations as much as he does his own, stands on a par with the man who loves other women as much as he does his own wife. The United States can accomplish little for mankind, save in so far as within its borders it develops an intense spirit of Americanism. A flabby cosmopolitanism, especially if it expresses itself through a flabby pacifism, is not only silly, but degrading. It represents national emasculation. The professors of every form of hyphenated Americanism are as truly the foes of this country as if they dwelled outside its borders and made active war against it. This is not a figure of speech, or a hyperbolic statement.

Theodore Roosevelt 1915

Teddy had some marvelous quotes, many of them would have him censored on YouTube, Twitter, and every media outlet… here are a few:

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.
Theodore Roosevelt

There is but one answer to terrorism and it is best delivered with a Winchester rifle.
Theodore Roosevelt

This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.
Theodore Roosevelt

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.
Theodore Roosevelt

Knowing what’s right doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right.

Theodore Roosevelt

Nothing worth having was ever achieved without effort.
Theodore Roosevelt

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt

There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag…We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language…and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.
Theodore Roosevelt

What a man does for himself, dies with him. What a man does for his community lives long after he’s gone.
Theodore Roosevelt

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
Theodore Roosevelt

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.
Theodore Roosevelt

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.
Theodore Roosevelt

Do Something Now. If not you, who? If not here, where? If not now, when?
Theodore Roosevelt

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
Theodore Roosevelt

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.
Theodore Roosevelt

Believe you can and you’re halfway there.
Theodore Roosevelt

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.
Theodore Roosevelt

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‘Present’ or ‘Not guilty.’
Theodore Roosevelt

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
Theodore Roosevelt

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.
Theodore Roosevelt

Our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics.
Theodore Roosevelt

The bosses of the Democratic party and the bosses of the Republican party alike have a closer grip than ever before on the party machines in the States and in the Nation. This crooked control of both the old parties by the beneficiaries of political and business privilege renders it hopeless to expect any far-reaching and fundamental service from either.
Theodore Roosevelt