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Welcome to a special midweek message from the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Insider, a newsletter that features regular updates about upcoming Dem-NPL events, legislative happenings, and news that affects North Dakotans!
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In 1928, Trygve Hammer, a Norwegian immigrant skilled with a hammer and chisel, carved a stone relief of Theodore Roosevelt into a giant block of Indiana limestone. He flanked Roosevelt’s image with two life-sized limestone bears. On the opposite side of the monument, Hammer chiseled images of bison, moose, elk, and bighorn sheep. Below that, he sculpted Roosevelt’s words into the stone:
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“Every believer in manliness and every lover of nature, every man who appreciates the majesty and beauty of the wilderness and of all wild life should wish to preserve our material resources, our forest and all living creatures of prairie, woodland and seashore from wanton destruction.”
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The monument, created specifically to honor Roosevelt’s conservation record, has been a fixture in Tenafly, New Jersey for 98 years. When we speak of something we believe to be an absolute truism, we say, “Carve it in stone.” It is not easily erased. Hammering out that memorial required patience, persistence, attention to detail, and steady workmanship.
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In 1910, a year after he left office and eighteen years before Trygve Hammer sculpted a monument to him, Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech in Paris. Two sentences from that speech are among Roosevelt’s most famous words.
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It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
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This short excerpt from a long speech—sometimes referred to as “The Man in the Arena” speech —shows up on locker-room walls, in leadership classrooms, and, this week, at a $450 million library built in Roosevelt’s honor, in a town of fewer than 200 people, in the North Dakota Badlands that made him.
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Theodore Roosevelt came to this same stretch of Badlands in 1883 as a 24-year-old greenhorn from New York, frail and half-blind without his glasses. He came back the following year to lick emotional wounds and ground himself after his wife and his mother both died in the same house on Valentine’s Day, 1884. He built two ranches here, the Maltese Cross and the Elkhorn. By his own account, this landscape remade him into the man who would eventually reshape the country.
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This afternoon, a crowd will gather near that library in Medora, North Dakota, for a dedication ceremony nine years in the making. The governor will give the welcome address, followed by former North Dakota governor and current secretary of the interior Doug Burgum. Secretary Burgum will sport a triumphant glow due less to the completion of the library he championed than to his close proximity to Donald Trump and the opportunity to have his praise for the president undiluted by the fawning of other cabinet lickspittles.
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It’s hard to imagine two people less like Theodore Roosevelt than Donald Trump and Doug Burgum. Trump is the living antonym of “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” He’s the opposite of Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena—a constant critic of anyone who gains his attention without groveling. Theodore Roosevelt led men into combat in Cuba; Trump fought for deferments to remain out of harm’s way. Roosevelt wrote 35 books on subjects ranging from naval history to ornithology; Trump is the least intellectually curious president ever, but yet an expert on everything. Roosevelt set aside roughly 230 million acres of land as national forests, monuments, and wildlife refuges, and created the Forest Service to manage it; Trump and his secretary of the interior seek to reduce that legacy. Roosevelt won a Nobel Peace Prize for talking Russia and Japan out of a wider war; Trump accepted someone else’s medal as a gift and got a FIFA Peace Prize that Roosevelt would have laughed at.
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When Doug Burgum ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, he told Meet the Press that he wouldn’t do business with Donald Trump. He said, in essence, “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.” Now he is one of Trump’s trembling lapdogs. Teddy Roosevelt would not be impressed.
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Maybe Trump will rise to the occasion today and give a unifying, nonpartisan speech about Theodore Roosevelt’s accomplishments and the example Roosevelt set for future presidents. No one is expecting that. The only real question is how many times he will mention Joe Biden.
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-Trygve Hammer
Candidate for U.S. House
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The Century Club supports our year-round work to build party infrastructure supporting candidate recruitment, local district and regional leadership, issue-based education, and tools for Dem-NPL success.
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Help us elect great Democrats up and down the ballot!
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The North Dakota Democratic-NPL is launching a new grassroots program called “Neighbor to Neighbor” where volunteers will connect with voters in your community to elect Democrats up and down the ballot. As a volunteer, you will be responsible for connecting with voters in 25 homes in your neighborhood or friends and family to help elect Democrats up and down the ballot about 3-4 times this year.
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Grassroots organizers are the lifeblood of the Dem-NPL! Sign up to volunteer with the Dem-NPL!
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