John Hawkins surveyed a number of bloggers, including myself, to list who they thought were the 20 Worst Figures in American History, and he published the results last night.
You know, I've often thought John should drop the whole "Right Wing" focus and title of his blog. I'm sure he's proud to be a conservative, but when I look at some of the stuff that made it onto his published list, it brought home for me just how--what's the word? "Extreme?"--people get when they identify too strongly with partisan positions. I mean, honestly, I'm no Hillary Clinton fan, but is she really worse than Charles Manson, Lee Harvey Oswald, or Aaron Burr?
Conservatives of America, as a sometime comrade-in-arms, I just need to tell you: some of you guys need to get a grip!
Still, it was fun to take part in John's survey. To make it interesting, I tried to restrict my list to 20th century figures, just because it seemed like Aaron Burr and Benedict Arnold were too obvious as choices. I came up with 18 choices from the 20th Century, and one from the 19th century that most haven't heard of, but should know about.
Note that my list is in no particular order, although some of my choices are obviously worse than others. Doubtless my list will not please everybody, but I'll stand by them:
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John M. Chivington: On the morning of November 29, 1864, Colonel Chivington led troops of the United States Army to butcher hundreds of Cheyenne Indians, the vast majority of them women and children. Initially hailed as a hero, investigations by the government uncovered his barbaric actions. He was then quite rightly condemned by the U.S. Congress and most decent Americans--but unfortunately had already left the Army and was beyond prosecution by the time of his actual crimes were uncovered.
This man dishonored both the United States Army and American history as a whole.
William J. Simmons: Religious and racial hate-monger William J. Simmons founded an organization in 1918 that he called the "Ku Klux Klan." This was named after a post-civil war group of the same name, which had been a vigilante enforcement arm of the Democratic Party in the South, but had petered out to insignificance by the 1870s.
Simmons fraudulently misrepresented his organization as the same as this earlier organization--and unfortunately, some historical sources still accept this fraud. In any case, by projecting a veneer of respectability, he suckered millions of (sometimes) well-meaning people into joining his "heroic" organization. His version of the Ku Klux Klan became the largest and most effective terrorist organization in American history. Terrorizing, beating up, and killing countless Catholics, Jews, and blacks (as well as, ironically, wife-beaters and drunkards who abandoned their families), they at one point boasted literally millions of members, and had infiltrated politics at every level nationwide. His Ku Klux Klan's back was not broken until the 1940s--and continues in some pathetic remnents to this very day.
George Lincoln Rockwell: Ironically born the same year that Simmons founded his new Ku Klux Klan, George Lincoln Rockwell founded a white supremacist organization that he hoped would supplant it: The American Nazi Party. A World War II and Korean War veteran, Rockwell adapted the anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-black ideas of the Klan, and, in an act of breathtakingly treasonous hypocricy, merged it with the symbols and name of one of the greatest enemies the United States ever faced: Adolph Hitler's Nazis.
A more vile, traitorous man has probably never been born on American soil. After his well-deserved death in obscurity and ruin, his pathetic organization's sole claim to fame has become that most White Supremacists think Nazis are cooler than today's pathetic Klan.
Jerry Falwell: After such odious insects as Simmons and Rockwell, it's a bit jarring to find myself listing this hapless idiot who has, even on his worst day, never advocated murder of people he didn't like. In Falwell's defense, I think his main problem is that he's a tone-deaf idiot, not cynical or evil. He runs charities that feed the homeless and help unwed mothers, and has even made efforts to reach out to some gay Christians and apologize for offending them.
Nevertheless, it's hard to imagine someone who's done more to make people hostile to Christianity, or more afraid of the term "traditional family values," than this man who has, in the name of Christ, regularly labeled people evil, degenerate, and perverts, and defended laws that jail people simply for their private behavior.
Ironically, anyone who considers himself socially liberal should probably thank God for Jerry Falwell, as he's done more to harm social conservatives than any other force in America.
Robert McNamara: Also in the "I almost feel bad to list him" department, this man, who served under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, was quite possibly the most disastrous public official in American history. He's admitted to many of his mistakes, but it's hard to find someone who put together more disastrous policy decisions than this man made during his tenure as Secretary of Defense, which spanned from the Bay of Pigs fiasco through most of the Vietnam War.
When I told Matthew Stinson I was writing something about McNamara, he said, "What better example to embody Burke's lament that 'the age of sophisters, economists, and calculators is upon us,' than a man who was all three?"
What a mess.
Joe McCarthy: There were countless people in America who, for the best of reasons, supported and applauded Senator Joseph P. McCarthy. A fearless opponent of Communism, McCarthy alerted tens of millions of Americans to the dangers it posed to our country--dangers which were very real. Devoted anti-Communists such as Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy were fast friends with this fighting Irish Catholic from Wisconsin, and were happy to ally with him.
Unfortunately, McCarthy's drunkenness and his obsession with power led him to excesses and dishonesty. Innocent people were sometimes accused on the most flimsy of evidence, as the very real problems that McCarthy exposed led him to try to find even greater problems that simply were not there. Eventually, all but his good friend John F. Kennedy turned against him in the Senate, and he died of alcoholism shortly thereafter.
Even his good friend and fellow Communist-hater, William F. Buckley Jr., eventually conceded that if you hated Communism, you had to condemn McCarthy. For in making anti-Communists look like obsessive and irrational lunatics, he did incalculable damage to the fight against the (very real) Communist menace.
Gus Hall: For decades this man was the head of the treasonous and hate-mongering Communist Party in America. He participated in numerous espionage activities in the assistance of numerous enemies, foreign and domestic, of the United States. This included espionage activities on behalf of the Soviet Union, as well as support for the North Korean government, the Khmer Rouge, and the Viet Cong. He also gave secret financial and other support to violent Communist front groups within trade unions in the United States, helping to foment violence and other illegal activities, with the specific intention of subverting both the government and the way of life of the American people.
He even knowingly allowed dupes to the Marxist cause to believe things he knew weren't true, knowing full well it would lead to some of their deaths--and knowingly lied to others about those deaths afterwards.
Besides, when you get right down to it, is there really any difference between hating people for their race, their religion, or for how much money they make in a free market society?
Alger Hiss: Wrongly revered for decades as a victim of anti-Communist witch-hunts, this man should be reviled for acting as a spy for the monster Joseph Stalin. But this alone is not reason to place him on a list of the worst figures of American history. No, it was after being caught that his worst actions became apparent. For not only was Hiss guilty of spying, but then, fully knowing his guilt, he spent decades allowing himself to be portrayed as a martyr by Marxists, Soviet sympathizers, and useful-idiot liberals. Exploiting the specter of McCarthyism, he slandered the people who convicted him, and helped slander cold warriors for decades, even after his death.
Noam Chomsky: No living American has manufactured more filthy lies and distortions about this country, her allies, or Western Civilization in general. Nothing more needs to be said about this pig.
Huey Long: Probably the most corrupt governor in Louisiana history (which is saying quite a lot), this populist demagogue was probably the closest America ever came to an actual fascist becoming President--had he not been assassinated first.
Al Capone: Still hailed as a hero by some, this man was a terrorist, a torturer, and a tyrant.
Tim McVeigh: The single biggest terrorist in U.S. history. The ultimate expression of anti-government paranoia on America's right-wing fringe in the 1990s, this man killed dozens of innocent children and harmless bureaucrats in Oklahoma City in "revenge" for Janet Reno's imagined "murders" in Waco, Texas.
Aldrich Ames: The spy who gave more to the Soviet Union than any other. 'nuff said.
Jesse Jackson: It is hard to think of any living American who has done more to inflame racial paranoia and hatred, most especially in the black community, than Jesse Jackson. This is a man who falsly claimed the mantle of Martin Luther King, a man who's never held a real job in his life but has made himself a multimillionaire as a shakedown artist and stooge to several murdering dictators in Africa. Jackson has never missed an opportunity to inflame racial paranoia in America, all while piously claiming to want racial healing.
One of my biggest embarassments is that I once supported this thug in his bid for the Presidency of the United States.
Charles Manson: Charlie Manson's not on this list just fo the 11 people he killed. There are others who killed more. No, he's here for what he represents: a sickness in the American soul that we still aren't free of. He bizarrely expressed, and still expresses, the worst aspects of countless social movements: quasi-Marxist, far-left "revolution of the people," race-hate based fascism, and a general hatred for people based on race, religion, income, social status, and achievement. All of that, all at once. He was also seized upon as a hero by the Symbianese Liberation Army and other terrorist organizations of the 1960s and 1970s. He's a strange man who's more important for what his life represents than what he's actually done.
Tom Hayden: The man who came to the 1968 Democratic National Convention with the express intent of starting the riots that made it such an infamous year. A little-known fact is that he also attempted (but failed) to turn it into a race riot. This man traveled to North Vietnam to express his political solidarity with the Viet Cong while American GIs were being killed fighting them. He acted as an apologist for mass-murdering butchers Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Castro, Ortega, and Mao. This is the guy who a lot of Jane Fonda's critics really ought to hate, although, like Fonda, he is still treated as someone only obsessives would criticize.
Huey Newton: An authentic American who claimed to be a Marxist revolutionary and a fighter for "black power," Newton was a murderer, racketeer, and con artist. He is, unfortunately, still hailed as a hero by some who want to assuage their white liberal guilt, and by some black-power idiots.
Elaine Brown: Newton's gangster bitch who even today portrays herself as a martyr oppressed by racist America. An apologist--and participant in--rape, torture, and murder, she's a con artist no better than Newton. Yet she's still hailed as a hero by some idiots and black racists.
Bernadine Dohrn: Still another American terrorist, one who cheered the Manson murders and went on to found the Symbianese Liberation Army, which killed cops and innocent civilians in their fight against "fascist Amerika." She's now a respected professor in Chicago, and treated like someone who was just a youthful idealist.
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Well, there's my list of 19 American villians. I'm sure others will have their own suggestions, and thoughts on my choices.
Great minds with the same thought -- I read this just after I posted on my blog how tasteless and wrong I thought it was to lump people with whom you vigorously disagree together with murderers.
Franklin Roosevelt?
I'm with you...I thought the list was pretty horrid. Bill/Hillary Clinton and FDR don't belong on any such list. I like yours better, except perhaps Falwell.
But my initial thought was Aaron Burr. He spent his later years trying to get support to start a new country west of the U.S. What a scumbag.
But my choice would be John Wilkes Booth as worst American ever. Booth thwarted Lincoln's plans for the reconstruction of the South -- and that may have avoided Jim Crow and segregation. And Lincoln's post-war stature (and relative youth) meant he may have been able to lead for three or four terms. In some ways, it took until the 1960s to undo what Booth had done.
Yeah, I'm not sure if the Clinton's should of been on the top 20. Perhaps the top 50 :-)
-Jarred
http://think-about-it.us
The problem with these lists is that they are all off-the-top. To really create a solid list you would need to solicit nominations from a wide body of people, most notably historians, to ensure that those making the choice remember to consider all potential candidates.
Without this step recent figures are heavily overrepresented as you can see. Neither Clinton should be on the list, it's too soon to evaluate. Bill could conceivably make it if the idea that his failure to pursue terrorists lead to 9/11 becomes generally accepted. He failed in his duty from my perspective, but it's unclear that a stronger approach would have made a difference. Hillary? She's a caustic bitch, but that wouldn't even make her the worst in my family.
I might make a case to include Carter, although again it's very soon. His pandering has cost us greatly in more than one arena. Iran, Cuba, Afghanistan, and North Korea, just to name a few.
I have a trouble with some of the collective selections the group of bloggers made. They are obviously partisan opinions as Dean suggested. I do not see Robert Byrd being nearly as bad as anybody on Dean’s list of worst Americans. Richard Nixon’s appearance is inspired by partisanship, period. The same goes for Lyndon Johnson and the two Clintons; however, Lyndon Johnson may be one of our least successful, and most disastrous, Presidents ever. But Johnson was not one of our 20 worst Americans.
Nixon made big mistakes regarding domestic politics such as wage-price controls, etc. Getting Nixon for Watergate is like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. Watergate is the only reason Nixon appears on this list of 20 worst Americans. Other Presidents certainly did worse without suffering public opprobrium.
Reverend Al Sharpton may be one skilled chicaner, but he certainly does not rise to the level of turpitude of John Wilkes Booth. Jimmy Carter might very well be one of the most hapless Presidents in American history with terribly naďve ideas regarding foreign policy; but he does not deserve being on the list of 20 worst Americans. I do not see FDR as being a bad American. He may be one of our biggest socialists to occupy the White House; but it remains whether his long-term impact will be more deleterious than salubrious.
I do not see Jerry Falwell as Dean does. He might be a narrow-minded southern Baptist telling others what to do. He is not a chicaner as are Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. Falwell actually believes what he says. That is more than you can say for either Sharpton or Jackson who are brigands of the first order. I would replace Jerry Falwell with John Wilkes Booth for the same reasons cited by IB Bill.
17) Robert Byrd (6)
14) Richard Nixon (8)
12) Al Sharpton (9)
8) Lyndon Johnson (10)
8) Hillary Clinton (10)
4) Jimmy Carter (14)
3) Bill Clinton (15)
I see two big problems with this list. The first one (it's a measure of the paranoid nuttiness of the respondents, who somehow find it rational to rank Bill 'n' Hill, two colorful but minor figures from a soon-to-be-forgotten decade, along with spies and mass murderers) has been covered here. The second one is, define "worst." Worst in terms of the damage done by an evil act? Then it's Booth, whose "revenge" on the North resulted in policies that punished the South and contributed to a century of backwardness. Worst if you're an extreme libertarian and you think the damage done to your ideal America is the great crime? Then it's Lincoln (and huzzah for Booth). How do you reconcile those two without defining what the whole list is about? This is more like the Top 20 Figures Who Piss Off Far Rightwingers.
How could Pres. Carter even begin to make a list of the worst Americans? This boggles even my pea-sized brain. With all the work he has done with Habitat for Humanity?
"His pandering has cost us greatly in more than one arena. Iran, Cuba, Afghanistan, and North Korea, just to name a few."
I am particularly interested in the word "pandering." The course of events in those nations were determined well before his term in office. Reagan "pandered" away more than Carter even dreamed of.
Dean, good list. I'll add Rush Limbaugh to the list as an anti-patriot.
Tim the Soldier
Tim, it's nice to see that liberal partisans would produce a list every bit as stupid as the right-wingers' list :-)
Yes, FDR. He had to stack the Supreme Court to Federalize so many things that had been left up to the States, thereby finishing the hatchet job on the Republic started by Lincoln.
Don't blame Bush when you suddenly realize we have an Imperial system, HE didn't stretch the Commerce Clause out of shape originally, allowing the bloating of the Federal Bureaucracy.
Yes, we would. Although I actually wouldn't include Reagan or Limbaugh. I was just joshing. I like Dean's list because most of the people on the list actually intended to cause harm to America, its citizens, and/or the way of life we enjoy with all the bells and whistles. But I appreciate you calling me out on it. Reading my post, it does look ridiculous.
Tim the Idiot
(see, only a loser would admit that.)
Dean,
How about a top 20 greatest Americans that never held elective office?
That's an unnecessary retraction, Tim -- I figured you were kidding. On the whole, I agree with Dean and others who think the list is buggered. Your idea of 20 best unelected Americans is a good one :-)
Dean I would have thougtht better of you. "Worst: is a relative term. I took worst to mean, done the most harm to the US. While what McVeigh and Manson did were horrible crimes, they were to a certain extent one time events. What some of the people I listed on my list did had long term effects that affected millions and millions of people in a very bad way. Ok, so J Lo was a bit of a joke but the rest of them are very serious.
Falwell doesn't belong on the list. He just had the misfortune of being the most visible Christian conservative when it became fashionable to dump on them. You'd do better with the "God hates fags" guy, whatever his name is.
As for McCarthy, nobody draws blood from leftists without getting insulted. Here's an exercise for you - identify a person who McCarthy falsely accused of being a Communist. Are you up to the challenge? If anybody deserved the line "at long last, Sir, have you no decency?", it was William Jefferson Clinton.
I'd like to ask Abe Lincoln if there wasn't a way to straighten out the problems of the 1860's without killing 600,000 Americans. We have no idea how popular Lincoln's postwar policies would have been, but we know that successor Andrew Johnson tried to implement them and was impeached for his trouble.
And mass murderers are all chickenshit compared to the late Supreme Court Justice Blackmun, the horse's ass behind Roe v. Wade. Throw in Sarah Weddington too while you're at it. Somehow abortion is the one thing that kills blacks out of proportion to their numbers that isn't racist.
If Blackmun believed that life begins at conception, he certainly belongs on that list. Along with everyone else that continues to allow abortion to be legal. Or, maybe like the most of us, he doesn't/didn't believe life begins at conception. That debate is not going to be solved in my lifetime.
Tim the Soldier
kevinb - "Getting Nixon for Watergate is like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. Watergate is the only reason Nixon appears on this list of 20 worst Americans. Other Presidents certainly did worse without suffering public opprobrium."
Refresh my memory. "Other Presidents did worse" than use the power of the federal government in the modern age to underhandedly attack political opponents (such as siccing the IRS on people, stealing medical records, etc), undermining democracy (the activities of CREEP, bugging the DNC), etc.?
I'm not saying he belongs on a "worst" list, but let's be clear he was an abberation as President.
Yeah, but at least this time, two women made the cut.
So I should be celebrating this as a step forward, right?
Heh.
"The course of events in those nations were determined well before his term in office. Reagan "pandered" away more than Carter even dreamed of. "
Only for those who accept the idea of Marxist inevitability. Under this theory anything anyone has done since 1958 has had no effect. Lefties, give up your call to end the embargo. Events have already been determined: the embargo can have no effect.
Would the Soviets have invaded Afghanistan if Reagan had been president? It's possible, but I suspect the answer is no. Carter basically came out and told the world he wasn't prepared to use the military. His spineless meandering convinced the evildoers (finally got to use that in a post, whohoo!) of the world that they could act with impunity.
I've always found the lefty positions on Carter vs Reagan's "Evil Empire" illuminating. In order to badmouth Reagan you have to claim the USSR was about to fall and that Reagan was just a placeholder. As it happens, this is exactly what they propose. But when you backtrack to defend Carter you have to make the exact opposite claim, that the USSR was so powerful and confident that it could not be deterred.
That combination of events seems pretty unlikely given that the two men were president back-to-back.
Here's an exercise for you - identify a person who McCarthy falsely accused of being a Communist. Are you up to the challenge?
Well, the biggest name to come to mind would be George Marshall. You know, of Marshall Plan fame? How about Deane Acheson?
Furthermore, how many did he drag into the spotlight because they were stupid enough to have once been a member of a group they didn't even know was ever Communist?
Would you like to explain to me why the man who brought Hiss down, Richard Nixon, condemned McCarthy? Or Eisenhower? Why William F. Buckley Jr. turned his back on his old friend?
It is fairly well established now that the Kennedy and Johnson White House abused the FBI and other powers quite as terribly as Nixon ever did--and while we don't know for sure, we have plenty of reason to think that Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon thought they were playing by the same rules as their predecessors had for many years.
Nixon was not an aberration when it came to abuse of power or underhanded, dirty tactics to win elections. Far from it. Just ask Richie Daley if he remembers what his dad did to help Kennedy beat Nixon in 1960. Something about the help of God and a few friends helped him win that little election, and Nixon was too much the gentleman to contest the loss and demand recounts...
"I'd like to ask Abe Lincoln if there wasn't a way to straighten out the problems of the 1860's without killing 600,000 Americans"
First, maybe you'd like to read a book on the Civil War and the period leading up to it to understand why it came to that? And please take note of which side fired first? (Not that that's always proof, but in this case, it's one more example of how the South forced war on the entire country-- and radicalized the North against slavery through its own extremism. I recommend William Lee Miller's Arguing About Slavery.)
Which reminds me that no list like this is complete without the man most responsible for making slavery a holy cause to the South, fighting any attempt even to debate it on the floor of Congress, introducing genuinely fascist legislation to stifle dissent in the South and thus preserve the aristocratically un-American privileges of the Southern landowning class: John C. Calhoun.
J Bowen: Fred Phelps is the name, gay-bashing the game. I've been directly condemned by him.
>>Refresh my memory. "Other Presidents did worse" than use the power of the federal government in the modern age to underhandedly attack political opponents (such as siccing the IRS on people, stealing medical records, etc), undermining democracy (the activities of CREEP, bugging the DNC), etc.?
Mithras,
Yes, other Presidents did the exact same things Nixon was blamed for. The Kennedy administration force audited Nixon three times before Kennedy died in November 1963. Remember too, Clinton had every single public conservative figure audited by the IRS who dare had the audacity to criticize him. Kennedy actually had medical records stolen to undermine Otto Otepka who would not grant a security clearance to Walt Rostow in 1961. It cost Otepka his job. I believe Clinton did a rather admirable job of making people fear their government with all his scare tactics i.e., investigating Linda Tripp e.g., to find any dirt to discredit them, etc.
That undermines a “democracy” too. Those are just a few good examples to start with. Would you enjoy a few more?
Dean, Your comments are on the button regarding this list. It worries me as a conservative that a lot of the people I read and respect could produce such a shallow list and are so piss poor at sorting things out. Two names that needs to be on your list: (a real sleeper here)Congressman Samuel Dickstein and Harry Dexter White.
kevinb,
"Clinton had every single public conservative figure audited by the IRS who dare had the audacity to criticize him."
That comment is a joke in and of itself.
Turn off the EIB network and R-E-A-D a book.
Tim the Soldier
J Bowen:
We have no idea how popular Lincoln's postwar policies would have been, but we know that successor Andrew Johnson tried to implement them and was impeached for his trouble.
The reason for that, of course, is that Johnson didn't have nearly the political skills, moral fiber, or established credibility of postwar Lincoln, to say nothing of his party affiliation (which gave him little political leverage over the Radical Republicans).
Among worst Americans, "William Pierce," the probably pseudonymous author of the "Turner Diaries," deserves a mention. His book is the Mein Kampf of the American nutcase-militia movement as well as one of the inspirations for Tim McVeigh's attack on the Murrah Building.
I'm not going to get into the question of Henry Kissinger's culpability for some of the worst excesses of Cold-War-era U.S. foreign policy; I don't know well enough to say whether the Pinochet coup in Chile or the brutal invasion of East Timor by Indonesia would have happened anyway. Suffice it to say that the only person ahead of him on the "Most Embarrassing Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize" is Arafat. That said, he's in a different class than Manson or Rockwell or Capone - as are Falwell, Chomsky and Jackson, to be honest.
Neither Clinton comes close, but putting Hillary on any such list is pretty preposterous, and betrays a fear of Hillary that is completely out of proprtion to her actual influence and power.
Hey Tim,
Here's something for you to R-E-A-D on Clinton's use of the IRS to audit individuals and organizations opposing him.
http://www.rense.com/general24/irs.htm
A pretty good list, Dean.
And Tim, you need to realize that you are digging yourself deeper.
Oh, Tim's doing just fine. The accusations about Clinton using the IRS do exist, but they haven't been proven either way. Although it is quite true than an awful lot of conservative organizations complained about IRS harassment, nothing definitive's been proven.
As for Fred Phelps: one thing I've long noticed about Fred "God Hates Fags" fame is that he gets an amazing amount of attention for a preacher who runs a church where an average of 30-40 people show up on a typical Sunday and who, by best estimates, has a flock of perhaps a hundred or two people.
I frankly view Phelps as nothing more than proof that the press (and others on the political left) have an obsessive need to believe and "expose the fact" that the American heartland is a seething cauldron of barely-restained religious nuts, racists, and wannabe-queer-killers. He fits that prejudice so nicely, he's irresistable to them. He would otherwise barely rate a mention once in a while in the local supermarket tabloid in whatever town he lives in (near Kansas City, isn't it?).
Doug: Harry Dexter White is a great choice. Dickstein I'm less familiar with I'm afraid. All I've seen on him is claim from anti-semite groups and McCarthy apologists that he was a Stalinist agent. I have read nothing definitive to make me believe it so.
Thinking about it, Clinton would make a "worst" list on a certain level - but so, too, would Ronald Reagan, Harry Truman, FDR and Woodrow Wilson.
Unless we're talking homicidal maniacs, we have to think in terms of those who blew it worst for the United States as a whole -
Wilson: As Churchill pointed out, the reasons for entering WWI in April of 1917 were the same as at any other time in the war, most especially after the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. By not getting in early, Wilson helped to ensure that Europe would be destroyed by the war, by getting in when he did, he ensured that a very vengeful minded Franco-British alliance would win in the end. He should have got in at the start or stayed out altogether - his choice, going in in 1917, merely ensured that we'd get the worst possible result.
FDR decided that it was better to ensure his 1940 win than do what desperately needed to be done in the late 1930's. Better for FDR if he had risked losing in 1940 than stand idly by and let the gathering storm build.
Harry Truman was given two chances to make right the failed ending of the Second World War - at the Berlin Blockade in 1948 and in the Korean War he as the necessary causus belli to go to a final conclusion with the communists; he didn't. Thank him for Vietnam, et al.
Ronald Reagan's failure was in Beirut in 1983; by failing to declare war on Syrian and Iran over their manifest responsibility for the Marine barracks bombing, he laid up a terrible gift for us - which was opened on 9/11.
Clinton's great failure was his inability to take advantage of Saddam's 1998 kicking out of the inspectors; per the cease-fire, here was our justification for finishing the job. It was also, by the by, the chance to correct Reagan's 1983 failure....
Ironically, anyone who considers himself socially liberal should probably thank God for Jerry Falwell, as he's done more to harm social conservatives than any other force in America.
Actually, I would take Falwell off the list as I think there is someone who hurt social conservatives FAR more: George Wallace. His invocation of "states' rights" in unjust (and losing) causes has made it far harder to raise that issue in cases where the Federal courts (and Washington in general) may be actually infringing on areas that should be decided by the states.
I agree with most of your choices, but not with these five:
1. Falwell. As J Bowen and others have noted, Falwell's principal sin was being the most visible conservative Christian at the time it became fashionable to dump on Christians. Even if we presume that at least one high-profile Christian must make the cut, Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart would seem to be better candidates, to say nothing of that GodHatesFags guy.
2. McCarthy. A flawed character, sure, but hardly evil incarnate. The left's long-standing ire toward "McCarthyism" has at least as much to do with his attacks on real communists as it does with the innocents here or there who were victims of his excesses.
3. Chomsky. Unfortunately, there are a lot more college professors out there whose views are just as bad as his. No one listens to them, of course, but then again, hardly anyone listens to Chomsky, either. I can't see Dick Gephardt, Hillary Clinton or even Howard Dean trying all that hard to get his endorsement in 2004.
4. McVeigh. Prior to 9-11, I'd have agreed that he was the worst of American terrorists. Nowadays, I'd have to give that distinction to Johnny Jihad instead.
5. Jackson. Yeah, he's a rat bastard all right, but worse than Al Sharpton, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers? If I had to single out one individual worse than all of those, it would be Ron Karenga, who singlehandedly (1) formed a black nationalist cult more extreme than the Black Panthers, (2) tortured two female members of that cult, and (3) invented "Kwanzaa," the corniest day on the calendar.
To those of you defending Falwell: I must point out that I have heard social conservatives make arguments much like Falwell's, but in much less insulting and frightening language. Which is sort of my point: the man scares the hell out of people, and always has, and I honestly believe half of it is not what he says but how he says it.
In most of my choices, the issue was less how personally horrible the people are, than the damage they have done to society, and the degree to which they've gotten away with it.
To some of Mark Noonan's comments: One of my favorite thought-experiments for the last 10+ years has been to wonder what the world would be like if Woodrow Wilson had kept his promises and kept us out of the Great War in Europe. I've run it through my mind many times and I usually come to the conclusion that both we and the rest of the world would have been better off had we never interfered in that conflict.
Of course it's always easy to say such things, since they're inherently unprovable.
Dean: How about you post on that thought experiment?
It's a great idea. I've never even considered that.
Near the end of the war, all the major armies were near (or at) mutiny. What if the French, German and British armies had successfully mutinied and put an end to the war? Is that along the lines of what you were thinking?
Interesting questions. Would WWI have ended like the Korean War, that is, would there still be trenches and DMZs across Europe. The U.S. still would have had to contain communism, and without the militarization of our society from WWI and WWII, would we have been prepared? Would someone else (Germany) have developed nukes in the 1940s, anyway, and then gone on a mission for world conquest? What about Japan's militarization?
Strictly speaking, McCarthy implied Marshall was a "Soviet agent". And Acheson and a number of others including Harry Truman were "soft on communism". Those are not the same as accusing someone of being a Communist.
And it is for such claims that Nixon, Buckley et al condemn McCarthy. You can thank Eisenhower for setting the wheels turning to bring him down, and he was censured by a Senate in which his party held a majority.
Why is it that of all political accusations, calling someone a Communist seems to require standards of evidence usually reserved for criminal courts? Will we ever see Democrats purging people who accuse Republicans of poisoning the environment or starving children?
Dragging people into the spotlight? Who did you have in mind?
If you have a problem with people being questioned about past political affiliations or beliefs, you must be absolutely apoplectic about how Dems are treating Bush's nominations to the judiciary. But as long as they don't say anything about communism I guess it's cool.
Anyone quoting the Jew-haters and tinfoil hate brigaders are rense.com has lost credibility in any debate. I'm agreeing with Tim here.
Mark, if you can give us some solid examples on how FDR could have single-handedly overcome the isolationists in the 1930s, please do. Otherwise, I think you're blowing smoke about how he could have gotten us into the war earlier.
It took Pearl Harbor to get most Americans to realize that we needed to get involved. And then you had scumbags like Lindbergh making sure the average Joe kept thinking it wasn't America's fight.
Hm. Perhaps he should go on that list, along with Father Coughlin.
>>Turn off the EIB network and R-E-A-D a book.
Tim the Soldier
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Tim,
I do read books regularly. That is how I learned about these executive branch abuses. I learned of Kennedy's force auditing of Nixon from Stephen Ambrose’s second volume on Nixon. Please note, Ambrose does NOT like Nixon; he says so in that very book. You can learn about the Kennedy-Johnson abuse of Otto Otepka in “The Ordeal of Otto Otepka” by William Gill, an AP reporter.
Clinton DID audit World Net Daily, NewsMax, Limbaugh, Tripp, et. al. This is common knowledge to those who do not spend all their time with receiving all their news from the television set. That is at least 80%-90% of Americans according to Michael Deaver. BTW, I rarely listen to Limbaugh.
kevinb,
Actually, I get all my news from Dean's World and Fox News (that's what is broadcast in my office). Of course I do subscribe to HBO and regularly watch Bill Maher and Dennis Miller (even though his shows are all reruns).
You know, the tone of my retorts is meant to be sarcastic, critical, and good natured. I hope you understand. I'm one of only a few left-wingers in my office (most of my co-workers are unfortunately devoid of a university education), and I have the tendency to respond in an over-the-top-James-Carville fashion.
Tim the Soldier
This list was about the worst Americans not the most evil. There is a big difference there which some people seem to be missing. It is all down to how you define the word "worst". I have to tell you the left-wingers must be enjoying watching the "right" consume itself trying to be holier than thou over this.
I can not tell you how much I have appreciated this thread.
As a centrist who has become completely disheartened at the extreme polarization I have observed over the past decade, my horror reached a new level when I read Hawkin's list.
I thought that if mainstream conservatives went along with this list, then all is lost.
But the response by conservative bloggers, and especially reading some of the comment threads(this one in particular), gave me a huge sigh of relief. I hope that when the left makes their list, intelligent liberals will rebuke the knee jerk tendancies of their extremists as well.
It is just too bad that the best minds arent in government, but in the blogospere.
>>Two names that need to be on your list: (a real sleeper here) Congressman Samuel Dickstein and Harry Dexter White.
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Doug Rivers,
You can also include all the other 329 Soviet agents who worked inside the State Department. I guess you can also include J. Robert Oppenheimer who was a Soviet agent. Also, do not forget Harry Hopkins, FDR’s closest advisor, was a Soviet agent as well. He died in 1949 before anybody knew anything about his treachery. You can learn about his perfidy by reading “The Venona Secrets” by Herb Romerstien, or by reading “Major Jordan’s Diaries.”
I forgot to add the Undersecretary of State, Sumner Welles, who waged his own foreign policy showing the Soviet Ambassador to Washington, D.C. highly classified decryptions of Japanese diplomatic communications before Pearl Harbor. This might have easily alerted the Germans and the Japanese that their most important strategic and tactical communications were vulnerable. That man should have been shot. Instead, Cordell only forced FDR to fire him. That was quite difficult to do since FDR liked Sumner Welles so much. Reading this stuff pisses me off so much I want to go out and punch a stupid Democrat.
Dean,
That is something that has haunted me ever since I became old enough to understand the First World War - the gigantic "what ifs".
Perhaps it was for the expiation of the sins of Europe - sometimes that is the only way I can understand why everything in that war seemed to have been calculated to bring out the worst possible result at the worst possible time. In a way, the world committed suicide in August of 1914: the lights went out, and they still have not been re-lit.
If you ask for a list of Worst Americans in history and don't expect some presidents, simply by the abuse of the power they wield, to be on that list, you are simply naive. Nixon and Clinton both belonged there, period. Ranking them at all is rather misleading as I seriously doubt any blogger ranked them above mass murderers/serial killers, etc.
Nice list of cronies you have. I especially liked what you had to say about Jesse Jackson, Jerry Falwell, Joe McCarthy and Alger Hiss. While so many Americans revere these people, they should be remembered for who they truly are/were.
>> One of my favorite thought-experiments for the last 10+ years has been to wonder what the world would be like if Woodrow Wilson had kept his promises and kept us out of the Great War in Europe. I've run it through my mind many times and I usually come to the conclusion that both we and the rest of the world would have been better off had we never interfered in that conflict.
Dean,
Winston Churchill mused over the exact same thing. He prophesized that if America truly stayed out of WWI then Germany would have sued for peace. Her territorial integrity would be preserved. The draconian Treaty of Versailles would never have happened. And Adolph Hitler never could have wrought his terrible tyranny across the world. And who knows if the Russian Revolution and Comunism would have ever happened?
kevinb,
Right you are (didn't know that about Welles), but HD White was the highest ranking spy ever and, I believe (haven't thought about it that much), Rep. Dickstein (D/NY) is the only sitting member of Congress ever to be an active spy - Venona confirms. Ironically, the good congressman was one of the originators of HUAC in the thirties - then targeting right wing extremists.
My top 6 list, based on who did the most harm to the country (even if they had good intentions and may have been basically noble people):
1) Lincoln: established the first military draft, suspended habeus corpus, issued first fiat money, and waged a war on half the country to force it at gunpoint, at the cost of 600,000 dead, to remain in the "union" (some "union", that is maintained at gunpoint). The first imperial president.
2) FDR: did his best to bring socialism to the USA -- a top income tax rate of around 90%, withholding taxes from payroll checks (another "temporary" measure) which makes the true cost of government relatively invisible to the average working man; institutionalized the idea of "entitlements" with his "four freedoms", setting us firmly on the course to the financial collapse that will inevitably result from people feeling they are entitled to have their needs met by the government; made it illegal for US citizens to own gold, and institutionalized fiat paper money, guarenteeing the eventual economic collapse of the country as has happened to every other nation in history that adopted fiat currency.
3) Wilson: instituted the income tax (thus giving the federal government a way to grow to its current mammoth size, while promising it would only be a temporary 1% tax on the very rich); embroiled the country in WWI, establishing the precendent of the US intervening in foreign conflicts and acting as the world's policeman.
4) LBJ: for expanding the socialist reach of the federal government with his "Great Society" programs; for fighting a half-assed war in Vietnam which led to the emergence of the whole hippie/leftist/multiculturalist/relativist/internationalist perspective of a couple of generations of young people and made it hip to scorn traditional American values, indulge in self-absorbed drug use and casual sex, and "tune in, turn on, and drop out."
5) Nixon and Clinton for disgracing the Presidency, causing the population to lose faith in government, making honor an anachronism instead of a requirement for a President, and poisoning and polarizing the political environment.
6) Jackson/Sharpton/Cochrane/et al for working to convince blacks that the cause of their troubles is to be found in white people's actions rather than their own, legitimizing the victim mentality and condemning countless blacks to wasted lives of envy and resentment instead of responsible productivity.
MarkJ: I might buy your Lincoln argument if it hadn't been for slavery.
The confederate states' secession was null because black Americans, whose rights are inalienable, were not represented at the state level. The south got what it deserved and then some for good measure, but still got off fairly easy. They probably should've been returned to territorial status until the racial issue was "dealt with"; that is, no segregation, no Jim Crow, none of that sort of thing.
The southern states had no real legitimacy compared with the other states. Lincoln and the North was thus under no obligation to permit secession.
I know this wasn't his argument, but it doesn't matter. He was right for the wrong reasons.
Listing Lincoln as one of the worst Americans is sheer lunacy. Listing FDR is even more bizarre. Maybe all the history books I've read have been mistaken. I guess the revisionists are coming out against some of our greatest citizens. Who's next? Martin Luther King Jr.? Jackie Robinson? Some of you guys are killing me. But, everyone is entitled to his/her opinion...time to up the dosage.
Tim the Soldier
Markj,
I bet blacks attempting to vote in the south who were forced at "hose-point" from registering would be thankful that the Kennedy and Johnson administrations eventually followed through with Lincoln plan. Of course, human rights abuses would have continued without the intervention of the UNITED States.
In fact, I don't think that a the whole succession movement was a democratic process. The typical white southernor of the time certainly didn't want war while the wealthy land owners certainly didn't fight in that war.
Let's put the political leaders of the confederacy on the worst list...they are the one's responsible for the deaths...
Your argument like saying the Dubya is responsible for the deaths in Iraq and not Hussein. Can you hear me now?
Tim the Soldier
Arnold Schwarzenegger should be there. He has killed the minds of so many young americans with his bloody films. On the plus side he is sorry for it (see Terminator 3 for evidence) and this monosyllabic moron wants our vote!
Your list is very accurate. You're missing 1 dude though. I'm stunned that LOUIS FARRAKHAN isn't on the list.
You want a top corrupt race hatemonger. This guy takes not only the cake but the whole freezer where the cake is held.
Even Huey Newton confronted Farrakhan back in 1971 (at least according to Elaine Brown's bio).
There's also Elijah Muhammad. Farrakhan's old leader and mentor. That fraud called himself a prophet (much to the dismay of millions of Moslems world wide) and Farrakhan still believes this. Even Malcolm X saw through all that bs and left. Malcolm left after finding out that Muhammad was screwing women half his age and having several illigitimate babies. Muhammad was still married. In fact he never divorced his wife. The women he messed with could've been his children.
What a horny old dog. He died in 1975.