The Family: The Foundation of the State

New York Governor and Vice President-elect Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech on “Christian Citizenship” to the YMCA in New York on December 30, 1900: 

“[T]he basis of good citizenship is the home. A man must be a good son, husband, and father, a woman a good daughter, wife, and mother, first and foremost. There must be no shirking of duties in big things or in little things. The man who will not work hard for his wife and his little ones, the woman who shrinks from bearing and rearing many healthy children, these have no place among the men and women who are striving upward and onward. Of course the family is the foundation of all things in the State. Sins against pure and healthy family life are those which of all others are sure in the end to be visited most heavily upon the nation in which they take place. We must beware, moreover, not merely of the great sins, but of the lesser ones which when taken together cause such an appalling aggregate of misery and wrong. The drunkard, the lewd liver, the coward, the liar, the dishonest man, the man who is brutal to or neglectful of parents, wife, or children—of all these the shrift should be short when we speak of decent citizenship.… But in addition to condemning the grosser forms of evil we must not forget to condemn also the evils of bad temper, lack of gentleness, nagging and whining fretfulness, lack of consideration for others—the evils of selfishness in all its myriad forms. Each man or woman must remember his or her duty to all around, and especially to those closest and nearest, and such remembrance is the best possible preparation for doing duty for the State as a whole.”

Reflection

• How does Theodore Roosevelt connect personal and civic duties? 


• How does he see the relationship of family and state? Do you agree? 


• How does his list of virtues compare with the teaching of the apostle Paul in today’s passage from Colossians?