The Man with the Muckrake: Rhetoric

    The Man with the Muckrake: Rhetoric

      Ethos

      If this speech were a Spike Lee film, it'd be Do the Right Thing…and not just because it deals with tensions in lower-class neighborhoods.

      Teddy Roosevelt in this speech is moralizing, from top to bottom. He wants people to follow his advice because he considers what he's saying the right thing to do, that good and evil are fixed things, and that people should follow his advice because it's morally correct. For example, take this sentence on for a spin:

      The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad. (41)

      First, he's setting up a strict dichotomy between good and evil. For an extra dash of uncompromising, he sets up in this and many other quotes an absolute relativism of crimes. For him, crimes are crimes and not-crimes are not-crimes, and there's not much wiggle room in his reasoning.

      Yeah, TR probably wouldn't like Do the Right Thing all that much.