The United States presidential election of 1900 returned William McKinley to the White House for a second term and gave the nation a new vice president.

Americans were satisfied with the strong economy and America's new stature and world affairs. By all indications, the next four years were going to look a lot like the last.

But one man was about to change the course of American history, driven either by a radical

political philosophy, or a disturbed mind, or perhaps some ineffable combination of both.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

The 20th century. Episode 16, Assassin's Creed.

Last week, I promised you we would get caught up with Theater Roosevelt, so we might as well

get into it right now.

You may recall that when we last saw Theater Roosevelt, he had resigned from his position

as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to volunteer for the Spanish-American War, because, in his

own words, he didn't want to be an armchair jingo. In today's English, I guess we would

say chicken hawk. As a side note, the origin of this term jingo, or jingoism, goes back to British

music halls of the 1870s. During this time, as is still true at the beginning of the 20th century, Russia is Britain's biggest

rival, and during the Russo-Turkish War, there was a song that was popular in the music halls

that included this refrain. We don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do, we've got the ships,

we've got the men, we've got the money too. We've fought the bear before,

and while we're Britain's true, the Russians shall not have Constantinople.

And so, shortly after that song became popular, people, mostly anti-war people, began to describe

pro-war people as jingos, and a foreign policy based on saber-rattling

and a willingness to go to war, jingoism. In the run-up to the Spanish-American war, the term

jingo was being bandied about in the United States, and some jingoes were accused of an

unseemly enthusiasm for, you know, sending other people to

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