Another Milbank piece from today’s Post includes this passage:

In an apparent reference to John McCain, Beck condemned a “guy in the Republican Party who says his favorite president is Theodore Roosevelt.” He then read disapprovingly the Roosevelt quote that “we grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used . . . so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.”
“Is this what the Republican Party stands for?” Beck demanded. He was answered with boos and cries of “no!” “It’s big government, it’s a socialist utopia and we need to address it as if it is a cancer.”

I don’t share Senator McCain’s TR-philia. (And I enjoyed Christopher Caldwell’s denunciation of TR as “an egomaniacal weirdo who was as close to being a psycopath as anyone who ever occupied the Oval Office.”) But what’s wrong with the TR quote? Isn’t part of the argument for tolerating concentrations of wealth in a free-market society that in one people can amass fortunes only by bringing benefits to the community?