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Thoughts on the “Resistance” Movement

While reading “Mornings on Horseback” a biography of Theodore Roosevelt by David McCullough, I came across a statement attributed to Mr. Roosevelt: “It may be that the ‘voice of the people is the voice of God’ in fifty-one cases out of a hundred; but in the remaining forty-nine it is quite as likely to be the voice of the devil, or, what is still worse, the voice of a fool.” Roosevelt was talking about his revulsion at the nomination of James G. Blaine as the Republican candidate for President in 1884. Roosevelt, a New York State Delegate to the Convention, told many that he would quit the party, but, later, decided that, in the words of Mr. McCullough, “But voice of God, devil, fool, whatever it was, he must abide by it . . . .”

If such a person as Theodore Roosevelt can abide by the nomination of a man whom Roosevelt loathed out of respect for the voice of the majority, how petty, how pusillanimous, how demeaning of our democracy the “resisters” of the Trump presidency seem.