Jake Leguee, Saskatchewan, Canada is a member of the Global Farmer Network who blogs. Below is a short excerpt from his most recent post:
There is one speech that has stuck with me, more than any other. I think about it when times are tough. When every decision seems wrong. When it seems that no matter what I choose, it will fail.
It’s referred to as The Man in the Arena.
Theodore Roosevelt wrote and delivered Citizen in a Republic, of which The Man in the Arena is one part, on April 23, 1910, at the Sorbonne in Paris, as he stepped into the role of ex–president, using Europe as a platform to define democracy, citizenship, and moral responsibility at a time of real global tension.
It was a warning: democracies fail when citizens become passive critics instead of participants, when comfort replaces duty, when responsibility is shirked across all levels of society. His warning was prescient, just a few years before the apocalypse of what we call The Great War. It feels eerily similar today.
None of us can predict the future. None of us know what’s coming. What we can do, though, is our best.
Featured image: "President Theodore Roosevelt his desk" by thegetty/ CC0 1.0
