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waggo
Joined: 18 May 2003
Location: pusan baby!
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 Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2007 10:19 pm Post subject: |
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| What about Ray Croc who gave American's McDonalds and fat arses???? |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 12:05 am Post subject: |
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ddeubel:
Nice bit of prevarication on your part, but not surprisingly. The simplest of inferences would enable one to discern that "influential" in this context refers to the individual's influence on the course of events in American history. Dduh. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 12:35 am Post subject: |
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| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
| "influential" in this context refers to the individual's influence on the course of events in American history. Dduh. |
Then why isn't Lee Harvey Oswald on the list. Certainly J. Edgar Hoover is one of the most influential people in American history.
Because it is a "The Top 100" list and that IMPLIES (without the need of inference) that it is about more than just who was influential. It is supposed to be about the great men of American history, as it used to be unequivocally known as before the PC move to be inclusive in a token way so as to appear to be more exhaustive and on the point than the bunch of politically-minded DWEBs behind the list were. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 2:54 am Post subject: |
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This list is fantastic. The top 20 is very well done. Lincoln should be at the top and followed only by Washington. Hamilton and FDR should be in the top 5.
Washington would have deserved #1 if he had done something towards curbing slavery, but as it was he owned slaves and did not touch the issue. It was Lincoln who saved the Republic against the threat of de-federalization of the government and the greater threat of the Confederate States of America turning all of South America into slave colonies. |
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contrarian
Joined: 20 Jan 2007
Location: Nearly in NK
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 3:58 am Post subject: |
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Woodrow Wilson, Henry Ford and Franklin Roosevelt should be out. Or bumped down into the second 20. Einstein wasn't an American. He was a German Jew. (That is a good thing.)
Wilson because he accomplished nothing in the US. Roosevelt helped get the Americans out of the depression but he also changed individual rights (very American) into human rights (collectivism).
Reagan desereved it. John F. Kennedy goes to Berlin looks at the wall and says; "Ich bin ein Berliner"! Ronald Reagan looks at the wall and rumbles; "Mr. Gorbachev tear down that wall." Down it came.
Colin Powell can go to heck! |
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ChimpumCallao
Joined: 17 May 2005
Location: your mom
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:01 am Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
This list is fantastic. The top 20 is very well done. Lincoln should be at the top and followed only by Washington. Hamilton and FDR should be in the top 5.
Washington would have deserved #1 if he had done something towards curbing slavery, but as it was he owned slaves and did not touch the issue. It was Lincoln who saved the Republic against the threat of de-federalization of the government and the greater threat of the Confederate States of America turning all of South America into slave colonies. |
ugh. i'm going to hang myself.
the whole point of the US was for a de-federalized conglomerate, hence the name. Lincoln was the first president in a LONG line of presidents that STOLE power from the states and centralized it, thus diminishing the whole beautiful idea of many states having a certain amount of autonomy under an umbrella organization.
not to mention lincoln wasn't a big "rights" person and suspended just about every single one of them, including (during the war) criticizing the war, the government and suspending habeas corpus.
lincoln didn't give a damn about slaves and there are many quotes proving so, including (i'm add libbing) "I don't care if I have to win the war by freeing no slaves, some slaves, or all slaves."
If you think this war was about slaves, please go back to fifth grade. It was about the centralization of power and punishing those states that had the gall to think themselves autonomous. They had every right to secede. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:08 am Post subject: |
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| contrarian wrote: |
| Einstein wasn't an American. He was a German Jew. |
You say that like it's a contradiction. LOL He became an American citizen, in a country built on immigration. If he is out, then Alexander Graham Bell is NOT American even though he too became an American citizen. And the inventor of basketball is out, as he was a Canadian who later took on American citizenship. Out is the greatest female actor of the silent film era, the beloved "American" Mary Pickford of Ontario, Canada.
To think the only true Americans are ones born in America is to be un-American. |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:28 am Post subject: |
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VanIslander:
This time I must concur with you in every respect except that concerning Oswald. To acknowledge an assassin in my view negates what the leader accomplished before his untimely death.
contrarian:
Thou is too contrary, methinks. In no reasonable sense could one exclude FDR from such a list and Einstein belongs there as much as anyone. We are after all a nation of immigrants. Wilson had a huge impact on the foreign policy formation of the U.S., although admittedly he was far less effective at home. As much as I admire Reagan, his stirring speech did not lead Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. That sounds cinematic but isn't the reality of it. That doesn't mean to say Reagan's policies didn't hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Colin Powell and his doctrine are a direct reflection of the thinking of junior grade officers who survived Vietnam and later impacted the reassessment of strategy in the military academies and the Pentagon. And I think he had a better shot at being the first black president, had he chosen to run, then Obama can hope for anytime soon.
Chimp:
Thanks for resurrecting the George Wallace Yellow Dog ranks of the old Democratic Party in time for the next election. The abolitionist movement was a factor, by the way, although not the deciding factor in the war between the states. Now go pay homage at the tombs of Lee and Jackson, or at least Strom Thurmond. |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:45 am Post subject: |
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| stevemcgarrett wrote: |
VanIslander:
This time I must concur with you in every respect except that concerning Oswald. To acknowledge an assassin in my view negates what the leader accomplished before his untimely death. |
That's okay. JFK didn't make the Top-100 list either. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 4:49 am Post subject: |
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| ChimpumCallao wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
This list is fantastic. The top 20 is very well done. Lincoln should be at the top and followed only by Washington. Hamilton and FDR should be in the top 5.
Washington would have deserved #1 if he had done something towards curbing slavery, but as it was he owned slaves and did not touch the issue. It was Lincoln who saved the Republic against the threat of de-federalization of the government and the greater threat of the Confederate States of America turning all of South America into slave colonies. |
ugh. i'm going to hang myself.
the whole point of the US was for a de-federalized conglomerate, hence the name. Lincoln was the first president in a LONG line of presidents that STOLE power from the states and centralized it, thus diminishing the whole beautiful idea of many states having a certain amount of autonomy under an umbrella organization. |
Okay. States deciding their own drinking age limits and driving age is fine. Secession is not fine. That's really all I meant. I'm not defending the worst abuses of eminent domain here.
| Quote: |
| not to mention lincoln wasn't a big "rights" person and suspended just about every single one of them, including (during the war) criticizing the war, the government and suspending habeas corpus. |
Suspending habeas corpus during a rebellion is not forbidden in the Constitution.
| Quote: |
| lincoln didn't give a damn about slaves and there are many quotes proving so, including (i'm add libbing) "I don't care if I have to win the war by freeing no slaves, some slaves, or all slaves." |
Yes, and the Emancipation Proclamation didn't free slaves in Maryland or Delaware, or even parts of Louisiana. It doesn't take a PHD in American History to reason through why he acted and spoke this way during the war.
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| If you think this war was about slaves, please go back to fifth grade. It was about the centralization of power and punishing those states that had the gall to think themselves autonomous. They had every right to secede. |
Right. Nearly a half a million poor whites died for States' Rights? Bullshit. They died because they wanted slaves for themselves. The plan of the 'states who had a right to secede' was to take over Cuba and move South from there.
Lincoln was the best leader any nation had at any time in history. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2007 7:14 am Post subject: |
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Quote:
If you think this war was about slaves, please go back to fifth grade. It was about the centralization of power and punishing those states that had the gall to think themselves autonomous. They had every right to secede.
Right. Nearly a half a million poor whites died for States' Rights? *beep*. They died because they wanted slaves for themselves. The plan of the 'states who had a right to secede' was to take over Cuba and move South from there.
Lincoln was the best leader any nation had at any time in history.
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My understanding has always been that while Lincoln fought the war simply to preserve the union, the reason that the south seceded in the first place was because they thought that Lincoln's ascendancy threatened the future of slavery. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 7:05 am Post subject: |
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Lincoln was the best leader any nation had at any time in history.
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While taking nothing at all away from Lincoln, I want to assert that Washington is even more deserving of the #1 spot on the list. The man's dedication to republicanism, sense of duty and personal integrity are why Lincoln had a union to defend and a country to re-invent at Gettysburg.
It is also a mistake to say the Founders did nothing about slavery. They were able to put into the Constitution that the importation of slaves would end and got the slave-holding states to go along with it. What country (where slavery played any significant role) in the world had abolished slavery in 1787?
I've suggested before, if you have never read Washington's Farewell Address, do so. It's online and isn't very long. For a lot of us, it will remind you why we are Americans. The wisdom in that Address is still pertinant today, 200 years later.
David McCullough's '1776' is available at Whatthebook?, and while it doesn't deal fully with the events of that year, it does a bang-up job of reminding you just how much the success of the Revolution depended on Washington's personal determination that it succeed. His initial victory of driving the British out of Boston, tails between their legs, (March '76) was followed by defeat after defeat until Princeton (Christmas '76). |
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hubba bubba
Joined: 24 Oct 2006
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| Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2007 7:20 am Post subject: |
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yeah, that list is so foo foo fluffy.
Most INFLUENTIAL? Should be a lot more captains of industry. Bill Gates isn't even in the top fifty, but Walt Whitman is 22? |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 1:20 pm Post subject: ... |
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Personally, I'd take:
JP Sousa over Stephen Foster
We hear Sousa's music much more nowadays than Foster's.
and
Samuel Houston over Brigham Young
Perhaps not a proper comparison, but compare the relative impact of Texas versus Utah.
I don't think Sam Walton and PT Barnum belong in the top 100.
I'd replae them with:
Douglas Macarthur
Brilliant military strategist whose own ego is responsible for the two Koreas.
and
Noam Chomsky
I know that's gonna rub some people the wrong way, but I think he could be on there for his contributions to linguistics alone. As for his politics, remember we are talking about influential. You don't have to agree with him.
And my top 20 of the missing (most of whom are probably in the other lists that we can't see without subscription).
1. John S. Pemberton and/or Asa Griggs Candler, dependng on who you want to credit for the influence of Coca-Cola.
2. Nikola Tesla if we can claim Einstein.
3. William Randolph Hearst for newspapers and aviation.
4. Edgar Allen Poe for pioneering the mystery genre.
5. Edward R. Murrow is as important as Cronkite.
6. John Muir and/or James Audobon for contributions to environmentalism.
7. Robert Johnson
8. Hank Williams
9. James Brown
10. Grandmaster Flash
As reps for musical genres
the list goes on:
11. Will Rogers
12. Stanley Kubrik
13. Orson Welles
14. John Huston
15. DW Griffith
16. Andy Warhol
17. Jimi Hendrix
18. Phillip K. Dick
19. Martha Graham and/or Isadora Duncan
20. Buster Keaton and/or Charlie Chaplin |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 4:50 pm Post subject: |
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| ChimpumCallao wrote: |
| the whole point of the US was for a de-federalized conglomerate... |
Certainly true for the short-lived Articles of Confederation (1776-1790). But the Republic that replaced it was not (1790-present).
If you are going to look for "usurpers" to denounce, then, you will have to go back much earlier than Lincoln -- that is, you will need to go back to the so-called Founding Fathers, the Constitution's framers. |
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