Well, if this is going to be an ongoing discussion — and I think it should be! — I commend those interested to read Mencken’s essay “Roosevelt: An Autopsy.” (You can find it here). Mencken, a serious though quirky student of German thought and culture, saw in Roosevelt a Prussian soul. He wrote of TR and Kaiser Wilhelm that both emphasized “the duty of the citizen to the state, with the soft pedal upon the duty of the state to the citizen.” Mencken once compared TR’s “The Strenuous Life” to Neitzsche’s writings. “The borrowings were numerous and inescapable.”