theodore "teddy" roosevelt

　　the man with the muck-rake

　　delivered 14 april 1906

　　演讲者简介：西奥多·罗斯福(英文：theodore roosevelt，又译狄奥多·罗斯福，人称老罗斯福，昵称泰迪(teddy)，1858年10月27日-1919年1月6日)，美国军事家、政治家，第26任总统。

　　关于耙粪记者的相关背景介绍：

　　所谓“耙粪记者/耙粪运动”(muckraker)，也称黑幕揭发记者/运动，是指美国19世纪末20世纪初掀起的一股新闻报道浪潮，一些记者和报刊致力于深入调查报道黑幕，揭发丑闻，对社会阴暗面进行揭示。其名称源于西奥多·罗斯福总统的一次演讲。此演讲中，罗斯福将20世纪初一批致力于揭丑、暴露、煽情等报道的记者，比作英国作家约翰·班扬小说《天路历程》中的一个反派人物，他从不仰望天空，只是手拿粪耙，埋头打扫地上的秽物。但是被批评的揭丑记者却不以为然，反而欣然接受这个称号。后来，人们便将这种新闻及报道这些新闻的记者和报刊称为耙粪运动、耙粪记者、耙粪报刊等，就如同人们将赫斯特报刊的煽情报道成为黄色新闻一样。

　　over a century ago washington laid the corner stone of the capitol in what was then little more than a tract of wooded wilderness here beside the potomac. we now find it necessary to provide by great additional buildings for the business of the government.

　　this growth in the need for the housing of the government is but a proof and example of the way in which the nation has grown and the sphere of action of the national government has grown. we now administer the affairs of a nation in which the extraordinary growth of population has been outstripped by the growth of wealth in complex interests. the material problems that face us today are not such as they were in washington's time, but the underlying facts of human nature are the same now as they were then. under altered external form we war with the same tendencies toward evil that were evident in washington's time, and are helped by the same tendencies for good. it is about some of these that i wish to say a word today.

　　in bunyan's "pilgrim's progress" you may recall the description of the man with the muck rake, the man who could look no way but downward, with the muck rake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.

　　in "pilgrim's progress" the man with the muck rake is set forth as the example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of spiritual things. yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing.

　　now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. there is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. but the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck rake, speedily becomes, not a help but one of the most potent forces for evil.

　　there are in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. there should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man, whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, business, or social life. i hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform or in a book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.

　　the liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander he may be worse than most thieves. it puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth.

　　an epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon character does no good, but very great harm. the soul of every scoundrel is gladdened whenever an honest man is assailed, or even when a scoundrel is untruthfully assailed.

　　now, it is easy to twist out of shape what i have just said, easy to affect to misunderstand it, and if it is slurred over in repetition not difficult really to misunderstand it. some persons are sincerely incapable of understanding that to denounce mud slinging does not mean the endorsement of whitewashing; and both the interested individuals who need whitewashing and those others who practice mud slinging like to encourage such confusion of ideas.

　　one of the chief counts against those who make indiscriminate assault upon men in business or men in public life is that they invite a reaction which is sure to tell powerfully in favor of the unscrupulous scoundrel who really ought to be attacked, who ought to be exposed, who ought, if possible, to be put in the penitentiary. if aristides is praised overmuch as just, people get tired of hearing it; and over-censure of the unjust finally and from similar reasons results in their favor.

　　any excess is almost sure to invite a reaction; and, unfortunately, the reactions instead of taking the form of punishment of those guilty of the excess, is apt to take the form either of punishment of the unoffending or of giving immunity, and even strength, to offenders. the effort to make financial or political profit out of the destruction of character can only result in public calamity. gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on the stump or in newspaper, magazine, or book, create a morbid and vicious public sentiment, and at the same time act as a profound deterrent to able men of normal sensitiveness and tend to prevent them from entering the public service at any price.

　　as an instance in point, i may mention that one serious difficulty encountered in getting the right type of men to dig the panama canal is the certainty that they will be exposed, both without, and, i am sorry to say, sometimes within, congress, to utterly reckless assaults on their character and capacity.

　　at the risk of repetition let me say again that my plea is not for immunity to, but for the most unsparing exposure of, the politician who betrays his trust, of the big business man who makes or spends his fortune in illegitimate or corrupt ways. there should be a resolute effort to hunt every such man out of the position he has disgraced. expose the crime, and hunt down the criminal; but remember that even in the case of crime, if it is attacked in sensational, lurid, and untruthful fashion, the attack may do more damage to the public mind than the crime itself.

　　it is because i feel that there should be no rest in the endless war against the forces of evil that i ask the war be conducted with sanity as well as with resolution. the men with the muck rakes are often indispensable to the well being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them, to the crown of worthy endeavor. there are beautiful things above and round about them; and if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck, their power of usefulness is gone.

　　if the whole picture is painted black there remains no hue whereby to single out the rascals for distinction from their fellows. such painting finally induces a kind of moral color blindness; and people affected by it come to the conclusion that no man is really black, and no man really white, but they are all gray.

　　in other words, they neither believe in the truth of the attack, nor in the honesty of the man who is attacked; they grow as suspicious of the accusation as of the offense; it becomes well nigh hopeless to stir them either to wrath against wrongdoing or to enthusiasm for what is right; and such a mental attitude in the public gives hope to every knave, and is the despair of honest men. to assail the great and admitted evils of our political and industrial life with such crude and sweeping generalizations as to include decent men in the general condemnation means the searing of the public con science. there results a general attitude either of cynical belief in and indifference to public corruption or else of a distrustful inability to discriminate between the good and the bad. either attitude is fraught with untold damage to the country as a whole.

　　the fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad. there is nothing more distressing to every good patriot, to every good american, than the hard, scoffing spirit which treats the allegation of dishonesty in a public man as a cause for laughter. such laughter is worse than the crackling of thorns under a pot, for it denotes not merely the vacant mind, but the heart in which high emotions have been choked before they could grow to fruition. there is any amount of good in the world, and there never was a time when loftier and more disinterested work for the betterment of mankind was being done than now. the forces that tend for evil are great and terrible, but the forces of truth and love and courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before. it is a foolish and timid, no less than a wicked thing, to blink the fact that the forces of evil are strong, but it is even worse to fail to take into account the strength of the forces that tell for good.

　　hysterical sensationalism is the poorest weapon wherewith to fight for lasting righteousness. the men who with stern sobriety and truth assail the many evils of our time, whether in the public press, or in magazines, or in books, are the leaders and allies of all engaged in the work for social and political betterment. but if they give good reason for distrust of what they say, if they chill the ardor of those who demand truth as a primary virtue, they thereby betray the good cause and play into the hands of the very men against whom they are nominally at war.

　　in his ecclesiastical polity that fine old elizabethan divine, bishop hooker, wrote:

　　he that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be shall never want attentive and favorable hearers, because they know the manifold defects whereunto every kind of regimen is subject, but the secret lets and difficulties, which in public proceedings are innumerable and inevitable, they have not ordinarily the judgment to consider.