In the Arena Read online

  That said, this book is not about the life, times, and policies of Teddy Roosevelt. Instead, the namesake of this book—In the Arena—centers on a 140-word quote that personally propels my life, and ultimately an 8,750-word speech that, if heeded, could powerfully propel America into a new century. I don’t agree with every word or assertion of the speech—and neither will you—but America desperately needs to hear the exhortation it contains.

  • • •

  America at the dawn of the twentieth century was a nation just starting to feel its oats. Nobody embodied that spirit more than Theodore Roosevelt. If getting off to a good start is important, then Roosevelt was responsible—more than any other man—for making his century an “American Century.” Nestled between a decade of mass immigration and economic depression in the 1890s and a world war that would reshape the globe in 1914, the first decade of the twentieth century and, more important, the man who led it shot America into the pole position.

  Roosevelt’s political ideology and governing philosophy are both pragmatic and principled, utterly defying neat categorization. Those who look for the historical Teddy will find many shades: Roosevelt the “law-and-order” New York Police Commissioner. Roosevelt the Cowboy. Roosevelt the Big-Government Progressive. Roosevelt the Conservative. Roosevelt the Imperialist. Roosevelt the Compromiser. Roosevelt the Agitator. Roosevelt the Republican Reformer. Colonel Roosevelt the Warrior. Roosevelt the Peacemaker. A man who seemed to welcome the prospect of armed conflict and sought the crucible of the battlefield himself, he was also awarded a Nobel Prize—for peace. On the domestic front, Roosevelt—a New York silver spoon aristocrat—pushed a “Square Deal” that took aim at cronyism and entrenched interests in an effort to make sure the little guy got a fair shake. He was an American, many shades over.

  Despite the apparent contradictions, however, three attributes best define Teddy Roosevelt the man, the leader, and the politician—and those same three elements dominate his speech at the Sorbonne. These three elements brought him from a sickly and frail childhood in upper-crust Manhattan to the heat of battle on San Juan Hill, and from the devastation of losing his wife and mother on the very same day in 1884 to the halls of the White House seventeen years later. Three core characteristics and beliefs—American citizenship, strength, and action—put Teddy Roosevelt on Mount Rushmore next to Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson.

  History is deceptive in the certainty it delivers, but the twentieth century was never destined to be an American century—it could have been, just as likely, another British century or a new French, Russian, or German century. Instead, largely on the back of the American ethos Roosevelt established, America dominated the twentieth century. His words from that moment in time—1910, at the grandest of academic stages in France—serve as a historical compass for how America today can continue to follow his lead and make the twenty-first century another American century. Across the mighty Atlantic Ocean and overlooking a brave new century, Roosevelt’s guiding principles—citizenship, strength, and action—echo through every word of his speech: Be good. Be strong. Get in the Arena. His words, and those principles, are needed in America today more than ever.

  The question is, will we heed his words? Will we elevate duties over rights? Will we perpetuate good citizenship? Will we recapture the rugged and virile spirit that built America? Will we raise our children plentifully and unapologetically? Will we perpetuate real “equality of opportunity”? Will we overcome the cynics and critics? Will America commit to winning the wars we must fight? Will we produce “good patriots” or rudderless citizens of the world? The fate of America—and the free world—ultimately hangs on those questions, and this one: will our citizens, whose shoulders upon which great republics rise and fall, get back in the arena?

  As Teddy says in the speech,

  A democratic republic such as ours—an effort to realize [in] its full sense government by, of, and for the people—represents the most gigantic of all possible social experiments, the one fraught with great responsibilities alike for good and evil. The success of republics like yours and like ours means the glory, and our failure the despair, of mankind; and for you and for us the question of the quality of the individual citizen is supreme.

  This republic is ours—yours and mine—if we can keep it.

  Through this speech, it is as if citizen Teddy Roosevelt—achievements, warts, and all—is reaching through the annals of history, grabbing each American citizen by the shirt collar, and growling: Wake up! Remember! Don’t apologize! Have courage! Work hard! Rub some dirt on it! Be patriotic! Be industrious! Be . . . American!

  His call to action is the call of this book. My own humble journey—which in no way compares to Roosevelt’s—thus far validates his recipe for the revitalization of our nation’s greatness. Our task now is to convince all Americans to get out of a defensive crouch and into the arena.

  • • •

  But what is the arena? While we each make unique contributions—driven by talents, passions, and circumstances—there is no my arena, his arena, her arena, or your arena. There is only the arena. This book, as with Teddy’s speech, is not a “you do you!” argument; it is the exact opposite. The arena is not a grab bag of personal priorities; nor is it a physical location, or specific vocation. Instead, the arena—locally or globally, large or small—represents the principled and selfless pursuit, advancement, and defense of the American experiment; a cause larger than any of us, gifted to all of us at America’s founding, and enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The principles and perpetuation of human freedom, limited self-government, rule of law, God-given rights, equal opportunity, and free enterprise were entrusted to us by average citizens of their day, and how we fight in the arena—and how many of us fight—matters as much today as it did in 1776 and 1910.

  For me, the arena has included tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. It has included cultural clashes on Ivy League campuses, firefights in Iraq, political confrontations on Capitol Hill, and media battles on FOX News and MSNBC. It has also included plenty of failures, through every twist and turn of life. For you, the arena could look much different—but no less important. The arena for you could be starting or running a small (or large!) business, local civic action, perpetuating patriotic observances, supporting a principled candidate, leading a Boy Scout troop, coaching youth football, or volunteering at your church. Your contribution to the arena could be your day job, or it could be the cause, business, civic organization, or campaign you incubate in your free time. In an American civil society built by rugged individuals with shared values, we will all have different talents, interests, and passions—all of which lead us down different paths, toward different pursuits, and to different levels of involvement. But all of those paths lead to only one American arena. You are either in it, or you are watching others shape it.

  Of course, entering and affecting the arena is easier said than done. It was not easy in 1910 and is not easy today. Modern America and her citizens face a mountain of obstacles to our collective experiment in individual human freedom and flourishing: a massive, sprawling, and impenetrable federal bureaucracy; broken public institutions and status quo politics; declining American virtues and fractured families; the conflation of amoral and uncontroversial causes with existential civic action; a corrupt, crony, and arrogant so-called elite political and business class; smaller paychecks, huge debts, and higher costs; opportunity inequality and social immobility; demographic challenges and diminished national identity; sprawling international institutions and shrinking American sovereignty; weakened military readiness and new, dangerous, and asymmetric Islamist threats. America’s educational, government, and civic institutions have been manipulated—in nearly every way—by a postmodern cultural seduction that has made our government exponentially larger and our citizens emasculatingly smaller.

  It’s enough to make you want to throw up your hands, pull all our troops home, declare a thirty-ho
ur workweek, and just become an inconsequential European welfare state already!

  That is, like clockwork, the way great civilizations and republics have trended throughout human history; they go through seasons—from infancy to growth to peak and eventually to decline, slowly or quickly. Many speculate that America, as well as the Western civilization we lead, has reached its peak and is on the slow decline. In fact, when surveyed, an overwhelming number of Americans today believe America is in decline. Unarguably, America is certainly older, more entrenched, and more institutionalized than the younger version Teddy Roosevelt inhabited. In 1910, Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt could resign, recruit a band of cowboys and college students (the “Rough Riders”), train them for a few weeks in Texas, and deploy to fight America’s enemies. He could even receive official decorations for it. More rules, more regulations, and more scrutiny make something like that nearly impossible today, not just in the Defense Department, but across America’s governmental and economic landscape. Red tape, regulations, and risk aversion have a tendency to add up. What is young always ages; it’s a fact of life and history.

  In this case, the weight of history is both the largest impediment to the twenty-first century being an American century and the reason we must make it one. The most likely scenario for our country is the inevitable decline that has met every great power in human history, including the French Republic Teddy Roosevelt addressed. Many great powers have risen, but all have fallen—followed by their influence and ideas. Even the most robust and principled actions may not be enough to prevent an unfortunate decline of America. But, here again, history comes knocking—because those who live in the real world (not the world we wish we had) and recognize human nature (not modern “social constructs”) understand a simple truth:

  History is not over. It is never over.

  History is also not inevitable. With all of its cruel twists and tragedies, villains and violence, human history and the imperfect humans who make it barrel forward without a predetermined moral compass. While political freedom and free markets seem like the norm to us today, less than 1 percent of human beings who have ever walked planet earth have ever lived free. Most have been subjects or slaves or subordinate to their family, clan, religion, or economic station in life. Most never conceived of voting for their leader, let alone voting fairly. And while freedom has increased in the West since our founders threw off the chains of tyranny from Great Britain, it has increased precisely because America was strong, principled, and increasingly assertive. With America on the scene, as imperfect as we may be, freedom has a champion.

  But what if America weren’t the strongest? What if we could not lead—morally, economically, politically, or militarily? If not America, who would it be? At the time of Teddy Roosevelt’s speech, the United Kingdom was still the West’s dominant power. Then, exhausted after two world wars, our British friends took a knee and handed us the keys to the free world, a leadership role that we embraced. But what if America, intentionally or unintentionally, took a knee today? What if we didn’t lead? What if—saddled by mountains of debt, sprawling bureaucracies, and entitled citizens—we were not capable of leading? The free world doesn’t have a deep bench; in fact, we have no bench. As we are witnessing right now, a world without America in the lead is a world fundamentally adrift, thrust back into the uncertain high seas of history. As we are witnessing today, the real world is unforgiving—and history is unfinished.

  In order for the twenty-first century to be an American century, our citizens, institutions, and leaders must find ways to overcome the challenges of our time. We can neither shrink from addressing the democratic, demographic, and deadly serious problems of our time nor find ourselves locked into never-ending political knife fights. If the twenty-first century is not unambiguously an American century, then it will not be a free century. Political freedom can be marginalized, free markets gamed, and free speech snuffed out. Whether it’s morally vacuous globalists, the ascendant, ambitious, and aggressive Chinese civilization, or an unholy mix of Islamists—the enemies of real human freedom are powerful, and they are swarming. America is the last best hope for the free world; and if we don’t prevent her decline now, then we are failing to prevent the decline of the entire free world—at least what’s left of it.

  Is Teddy Roosevelt grabbing your shirt collar yet?

  At home, we need Roosevelt’s “good citizens.” The virtues that make America the free world’s guarantor, and the military might that underwrites that guarantee, are right, good, and true—and worth fighting for. Those virtues start at home, and are in short supply in today’s America. Familiar refrains—from the ideological Left, the fractured Right, and a “war weary” nation—do not sufficiently answer the challenges of the twenty-first century. A renewed and informed formulation of what makes America special, and therefore exceptional, is needed to fortify the defense of our fragile freedoms and reawaken the spirit of American citizenship and leadership.

  In order to advocate for both our highest virtues at home and fortify a skeptical public toward an assertive posture in the world, we need to get out from underneath well-worn cultural wars and address a deeper and more insidious civic shortfall: an American public, as Teddy put it, that is “far more conscious of its rights rather than of its duties and blind to its own shortcomings.” Ultimately, great republics rise—and fall—on the backs of ordinary citizens; it’s an empowering, yet harrowing, truth. Moreover, the tireless pursuit of equal opportunity, economic freedom, and civic-mindedness ought be the passion of those seeking to empower all Americans, defending and perpetuating a tiny American Dream that drives the massive engine of prosperity and power.

  Being a great nation first requires forging “good citizens”—a reeducation America must undertake. The word reeducation is used intentionally, to denote both the bottom-up swell and the top-down intentionality with which such a task must be undertaken. Too many Americans, young and old, don’t understand what makes America special and, as such, are easily swayed by cheap, seductive, and failed formulations of governance, economics, and human nature.

  Abroad, we desperately need Roosevelt’s “good patriots.” Following fifteen years of difficult combat operations since 9/11, the advancement of American values and interests abroad faces a multitude of internal obstacles that Teddy knew well. First is the “foolish cosmopolitan” who sees nothing exceptional about America, and instead believes international institutions and “mutual understanding” will unleash perpetual peace. This is the modern Left’s “Coexist” crowd, personified by Barack Obama’s “blame America first” foreign policy approach. Second, on the other end of the ideological spectrum, are isolationists (dubbed “anti-imperialists” by Roosevelt and rebranded as “restraint” advocates today) who seek to neuter America’s “will and the power,” believing that American intervention is unnecessary and unhelpful—espousing the belief that restraining American action minimizes overseas threats. The third obstacle is outright “citizens of the world” whose “international feeling swamps . . . national feeling.” Our campuses and media are filled with such sentiment, undercutting commitment to American values. Instead, as Roosevelt noted forcefully in the speech, our citizenry must be “good patriots” before we hope to constructively engage the world.

  My experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, like that of millions more Americans on other battlefields, supports Roosevelt’s assertions. Conventional wisdom holds that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were a fiasco; no doubt mistakes were made and outcomes murky. However, especially in Iraq, great triumphs were also achieved and hard-won lessons learned—if not in the White House or on Capitol Hill. I will argue, forcefully, that in light of the world we live in today, the Iraq War teaches us more about what to do than what not to do. My take on the wars in Afghanistan and Libya, by contrast, are different. The 9/11 generation looks at the world with eyes wide open, knowing, in Roosevelt’s words, “there is no effort without error and shortcoming.” And like Colon
el Roosevelt standing atop San Juan Hill, we have learned that only American resolve—not unilateral retreat or shortsighted restraint—can ensure the twenty-first century is free and prosperous.

  I was a college student when the attacks of 9/11 occurred, an event that will forever shape the trajectory of my life. I was a soldier in Samarra, Iraq, the day a different type of 9/11-scale attack occurred: the bombing of the Samarra Golden Mosque, which sent Iraq spiraling downward in a cycle of bloody sectarian violence. I remember hearing the explosion in Samarra that morning and quickly realizing that the war—and the world—would soon change. The Golden Mosque attack, like 9/11, was perpetrated by elements of Al Qaeda. As I experienced on the ground, the 2007 troop surge and change of U.S. strategy in Iraq was the effective application of American power needed to forge a good outcome for Americans and Iraqis, whereas the precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops, and abandonment of strategic gains, was not. The lessons of that effort—as well as the benefit of hindsight—demonstrate that an engaged, aggressive, and strong America is more effective than a timid and apologetic America that “leads from behind.” Both the nexus of the Islamic State, and our ongoing fight against them, tragically tell the same story.