Thread by @DavidPepper

113 years later. Same story.

Read Teddy Roosevelt’s words from 1912:

“The great fundamental issue now before before our people can be stated briefly. It is, Are the American people fit to govern themselves, to rule themselves, to control themselves? I believe they are…

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…My opponents do not. I believe in the right of the people to rule. I believe that the majority of the plain people of the United States will, day in and day out, make fewer mistakes in governing themselves than any smaller class or body of men….

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…I believe, again, that the American people are, as a whole, capable of self-control and of learning by their mistakes. Our opponents pay lip-loyalty to this doctrine; but they show their real beliefs by the way in which they champion every device to make the nominal rule of

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…the people a sham.

I have scant patience with this talk of the tyranny of the majority. Wherever there is tyranny of the majority, I shall protest against it with all my heart and soul.

But we are today suffering from the tyranny of minorities.

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It is a small minority that is grabbing our coal-deposits, our water-powers, and our harbor fronts. A small minority is battening on the sale of adulterated foods and drugs. It is a small minority that lies behind monopolies and trusts….

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The only tyrannies from which men, women & children are suffering in real life are the tyrannies of minorities….No sane man who has been familiar with the government of this country for the last 20 years will complain that we have had too much of the rule of the majority…

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…The trouble has been a far different one that, at many times and in many localities, there have held public office in the States and in the nation men who have, in fact, served not the whole people, but some special class or special interest….

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I am not thinking only of those special interests which by grosser methods, by bribery and
crime, have stolen from the people.

I am thinking as much of their respectable allies and figureheads, who have ruled and legislated and decided…

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as if in some way the vested rights of privilege had a first mortgage on the whole United States, while the rights of all the people were merely an unsecured debt. Am I overstating the case? Have our political leaders always, or generally, recognized their duty…

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to the people as anything more than a duty to disperse the mob, see that the ashes are taken away, and distribute patronage? Have our leaders always, or generally, worked for the benefit of human beings, to increase the prosperity of all the people, to give each some…

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opportunity of living decently and bringing up his children well? The questions need no answer….
Now there has sprung up a feeling deep in the hearts of the people-not of the bosses and professional politicians, not of the beneficiaries of special privilege—

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a pervading belief of thinking men that when the majority of the people do in fact, as well as theory, rule, then the servants of the people will come more quickly to answer and obey, not the commands of the special interests, but those of the whole people….”

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Roosevelt goes on to list a number of reforms that will serve this end:
“First, there are the "initiative and referendum," which are so framed that if the legislatures obey the command of some special interest, and obstinately refuse the will of the majority…

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the majority may step in and legislate directly. No man would say that it was best to conduct all legislation by direct vote of the people--it would mean the loss of deliberation, of patient consideration but, on the other hand, no one whose mental arteries have not long…

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since hardened can doubt that the proposed changes are needed when the legislatures refuse to carry out the will of the people. The proposal is a method to reach an undeniable evil….”

“We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming…

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years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men. If on this new continent we merely build another country of great but unjustly divided material prosperity,

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we shall have done nothing; and we shall do as little if we merely set the greed of envy against the greed of arrogance, and thereby destroy the material well-being of all of us.

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To turn this government either into government by a plutocracy or government by a mob would be to repeat on a larger scale the lamentable failures of the world that is dead. We stand against all tyranny, by the few or by the many.

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We stand for 'the rule of the many in the interest of all of us, for the rule of the many in a spirit of courage, of common sense, of high purpose, above all in a spirit of kindly justice toward every man and every woman.

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We not merely admit, but insist, that there must be self-control on the part of the people, that they must keenly perceive their own duties as well as the rights of others; but we also insist that the people can do nothing unless they not merely have…

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… but exercise to the full, their own rights.“

Within a year of this speech, Ohioans voted to give ourselves the direct ability to amend our Constitution by a majority vote.

We’ve enjoyed that right ever since.

It’s no accident that Ohio’s statehouse, living down to all the…

…descriptions Roosevelt made of corrupted government more than a century ago, is now trying to strip Ohio voters of the very power Roosevelt called for to end the tyranny of the minority and their lackey politicians.

Four days.

Vote No on Issue 1.

END