Tag: Theodore Roosevelt

Coronavirus, Domestic Policy

Coronavirus – Some Positive News

Bob Claude |

No nation can be great unless its sons and daughters have in them the quality to rise level to the needs of heroic days.

World War I Homefront Poster with Quote from Theodore Roosevelt. 

These are heroic days and call for all kinds of heroism from Americans. The vast majority of us are hopefully following official directions to stay home and practicing the new mantra of social distancing. Meanwhile, public safety, health and grocery workers are reminding us that heroism is often found in simply doing the ordinary extraordinarily well.  While the news may be grim now, there are some green shoots of hope out there.

The Guardian, a British newspaper, is regularly publishing a state by state breakdown of coronavirus cases in the United States here. It is updated daily  and shows bar graphs depicting the number of new cases over the previous five days by state. While the national number continues to climb at a worryingly geometric rate,  the bar graphs on the right of the chart indicate that Washington state may already be flattening the curve of infection. You may remember that it started testing and instituted radical social distancing earlier than the rest of the country.  Unfortunately, the rates in New York and the rest of the country are increasing, but the apparent success on the West Coast gives us hope that the current limitations may be working as intended.  

This MarketWatch site has a list of the 15 companies or groups that are working on either a treatment or a vaccine. A lot is going on behind the scenes to bring us to the point where we have the pharmaceutical tools necessary to treat or prevent infections and thus end the need for quarantines. However, any such treatment will need to undergo basic testing for safety and effectiveness. 

Finally, a group of Irish engineers invented an open source method for 3d printing of a ventilator. Together with the commitment of some American manufacturers to dedicate production to this need, it offers a way to close the gap in the medical resources needed to treat serious COVID-19 cases and reduce the fatality rate. 

I encourage you to remember TR’s comment about what makes great nations.  Like our fathers and grandfathers during the two world wars, we can make a difference on our own home fronts. Let’s do it!

Coronavirus, Domestic Policy

Coronavirus – A Challenge to All Americans

Bob Claude |

Controlling the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic will require Americans to unify behind measures necessary to achieve victory over the disease. Panic is unnecessary, simply because America knows how to rise to this challenge and has overcome similar ones in the past.  

This article from the Scientific American magazine’s website (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/preparing-for-coronavirus-to-strike/) is both a helpful primer on the epidemiology of the disease and a call to Americans to make the sacrifices necessary to control it.  While the data is still insufficient, it appears that COVID-19 is generally as contagious as the flu, though its 2% fatality rate is higher. This higher fatality rate means as many as  2-4 million Americans could die without a coordinated response. The key to preventing this scale of tragedy lies in reducing the number of infections by practicing the basic precautions described in the article and by isolating those infected for the two-week period during which they are infectious.  Some public gatherings and events may need to be canceled to avoid inadvertent spread of the disease.  Employers will have to allow employees to work from home or provide paid sick leave during recovery to provide the job security to encourage them to stay home.  Thankfully, many large employers already have such contingency plans developed a decade ago to prepare for a potential bird flu epidemic.  Epidemiologists call this “flattening the curve” of the spread, which avoids overwhelming hospitals with patients, allows the authorities to develop supporting infrastructure and gives medicine sufficient time to find and adequately test a vaccine.   

This kind of community response must be supported by a coordinated effort by the federal government to develop the weapons we need to defeat the virus. An article from the DefenseOne website outlines the military-style program necessary to develop those weapons. See https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/02/federal-government-should-go-war-coronavirus-today/163401/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl.  The appointment of Vice-President Pence to lead the response is a good first start.  Both articles point out that one of our most important weapons is information.  Americans need full and frequent updates on the disease and the work of community, national and international organizations fighting against it.  For example, the development of a vaccine is being led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI), an international consortium of university research centers and biotechnology firms whose goal is to develop a vaccine for a new disease within 16 weeks of its identification.  They have already rough drafts of applications for approval and testing of a coronavirus vaccine to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other nation’s drug regulatory agencies. CEPI represents the best form of globalization – an alliance of private groups focused on positive solutions of  a specific issue, but subject to the policies of each nation-state. You can follow their work at https://cepi.net/.    

Thus, all of the societal, medical, scientific and governmental resources are in place to protect our country from the worst of the COVID-19 epidemic.  We know how to do it and have successfully done it in the past.  The photo at the beginning of this post is of Dr. William C. Gorgas, the Army doctor and chief medical officer of the Panama Canal construction project tasked by Theodore Roosevelt to battle against the yellow fever and malaria that had defeated the French construction effort.  He used military style tactics to control the mosquitoes carrying the diseases and enabled the United States to complete a project that others only dreamed about. (See https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/this-army-doctor-made-the-panama-canal-possible-by-killing-mosquitoes   The same unified commitment and community spirit can prevail once again in the fight against COVID-19.  

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Mission Statement

Bob Claude |

America faces unique and dangerous challenges in today’s increasingly nationalist world.  Globalization has failed to render the nation-state obsolete, an always naive goal in a still anarchic world.  Instead, nations like China, the developing world and even Europe are defining themselves in terms of their respective histories and heritages, usually ethnic in origin. Managing the resulting tensions will require a realistic and restrained strategy built on America’s own social, economic and military strength. 

This strength ultimately springs from the unified commitment of the American people to the values of liberty, democracy, equal opportunity and the American Dream.  America is exceptional because it was based on these values, not mere ethnicity or a common history   However, the internal threats of identity politics and unbridled market power are weakening the community spirit on which our strength is based.  Our ability to remain a inspirational world power now hangs on whether we can overcome those forces and renew our shared commitment to our fellow American citizens. 

This site seeks to create a new political movement dedicated to preserving American sovereignty and values and the American Dream for all citizens while respecting the sovereignty and goals of other nations.   We believe the life and philosophy of former President Theodore Roosevelt offers a way to achieve this goal.  He confronted very similar problems during his time and led the nation on the path toward solutions.   Not all of his solutions will fit our times and we will not hesitate to highlight disagreements with his likely approach.   However, his dedication to both a strong America and a “square deal” for the average American still resonates a century later and can be the unifying political ideology we so desperately need.  We invite you to participate in this movement with your comments to this discussion and advocacy of these ideas in your own community.