Best person of the 20th Century?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Best person is much harder than worst person.

It seems a more total test.

Nobody cares whether Hitler loved dogs but if a seemingly good person beat dogs between his/her good deeds it would seem disqualifying.

One of my favorite good acts of the 20th century was when Governor John M. Slaton commuted the death sentence of Leo Frank in 1915, knowing it would end his political career.

But how all-around good could any elected governor of Georgia have really been in 1915?

Who is your pick as best person of the 20th Century?

[Taverner]

1. Henry Agard Wallace

[roguevalley]

69. agreed, him and my parents.

[Radical Activist]

73. delete

[Taverner]

79. You thought I meant the other Wallace, didn't ya?

:)

[Radical Activist]

82. I just responded in the wrong place accidentally.

Wallace is somewhere on my top 10.

[Douglas Carpenter]

106. he was indeed a good man, a great man

although I nominated someone else below

[saltpoint]

2. Tough, and excellent, question.

I'd have to work with a list of nominees, which would at least include the men and women who worked in the European underground against Hitler.

[LooseWilly]

24. How about Samuel Beckett... was in the French Resistance, and wrote 'Waiting for Godot'

... I wonder if that means Ike = Godot? (Or maybe all-things-American = Godot?)

[saltpoint]

52. Beckett's loyalists make sense and he cuts quite

a swath across Irish literature, IMO.

Yep.

[hfojvt]

75. Waiting for Godot?

That might qualify him for worst, but I don't see how best comes from that. Godot? Seriously?

[LooseWilly]

90. Yes, Godot.

Seriously.

A country road. A tree.

Evening.

Estragon, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his boot. He pulls at it with both hands, panting.

He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again.
As before.
Enter Vladimir.

ESTRAGON:
(giving up again). Nothing to be done.

VLADIMIR:
(advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart). I'm beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I've tried to put it from me, saying Vladimir, be reasonable, you haven't yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to Estragon.) So there you are again.

...

It's participation on DU, or the Democratic Party, condensed into a simple exchange. It's life itself, summed up in the act of trying to take off a boot.

And it won him a Nobel Prize. Not one of those Peace-War ones, but one for literature - because it was a completely new approach to drama. The basic structure of the play was stolen/re-worked by Stoppard for 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' ... made into a movie with Tim Roth and Gary Oldman.

On the other hand, Existentialism does make a lot of people queasy. I know a lot of people aren't up to facing an illustration of life with all the "meanings" seriously questioned... even the "self-evident" meanings.

Go on... explain to everyone how 'Waiting For Godot' is dumb.

[Steely_Dan]

97. I Am A Lifelong Existentialist...

Most people don't understand.

-PLA

[LooseWilly]

107. A friend once said something that explained...

those who don't understand in a way that I could get my head around. "Most people read this stuff and say 'Wow, that's a fucked up way to look at the world,' - you read it and say 'Wow, finally, someone sees it.' ..."

Until he said it, it hadn't occurred to me that Existentialism could be anything other than obvious to everyone... obvious, and liberating.

[Steely_Dan]

108. Wow...Exactly.

I majored in Philosophy right through graduate school. To some extent I adopted everything I read until I ran into something that made more sense. I continued this for years. However, when I read Sartre and Camus, I said to myself...yep...someone else "gets it."

I met many who would ask me why I would attach myself to such a depressing philosophy. I never really thought that I "attached myself." I had always been an Existentialist, I just didn't know it.

I began to see existential themes in everything...It was all around me. It was in Kafka, Poe, Marcuse, Kierkegaard (sp) and others. It was all around me and it made sense...it was intuitive.

It is almost unfortunate that this philosophy actually has a name...a school of thought. Because for me, it is beyond labeling. It simply is what it is...clear and present.

-PLA

[LooseWilly]

109. Yeah, I got lucky to have the not-obviousness pointed out to me.

It goes beyond obvious for me. Beckett in particular was like a crystallization of what I'd been thinking, in imagery and dialogue that was more concise than any of the fumbling and irony that I was using to reach after the expression. (I first got exposed in high school, then managed to find a seminar as an English major that had Beckett and Nabokov as the main focii.) That it could fail to be a revelation for everyone else was hardly a consideration at first (ohh, to be young again). It was only after having heard the "explanation", which for my friend was just an ironic (and incredibly insightful) side-comment, that I realized just how deep my "divorce" from the suburbanites I'd been so thoroughly acquainted with finally became apparent to me.

It was enough to later make Bill Clinton's half-quip: "It depends on what your definition of 'is' is..." cause me to at least half-respect him.

[UndertheOcean]

3. Easy : Mahatma Ghandi .

[CanonRay]

7. Second the motion

[Warren Stupidity]

17. yup

[tinrobot]

37. Agreed

[Starry Messenger]

4. Paul Robeson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson

Civil rights hero and all around interesting guy.

[EFerrari]

104. I have to go with DuBois. He's been right about everything

and that never happens. lol :hi:

[Solomon]

112. Paul Robeson was my first thought. The world's only true

Superman.

[undeterred]

5. Al Gore

[niyad]

6. I wouldn't--the idea that one person, out of the billions on this planet, is somehow the best, is

absurd.

[hfojvt]

76. What about

the person who wrote this song?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xxgRUyzgs0&feature=av2n

but clearly a strong case can be made for this guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x63fX8coUho

[Steely_Dan]

96. It's So Strange...

I set out to find this video the other night. Love this song...love the lyrics.

-PLA

[zipplewrath]

8. Probably MLK

Someone else mentioned Ghandi.
It's a tad tough because it was "easier" to be a global or national figure in the later years than the early decades. MLK only achieved what he did because there was a national press, including television. There are probably hundreds from the early decades that had extreme local impact, but never were able to make that kind of impact on a wider scale, except for politicians.

FDR could be considered, although he's a mixed case.

[Name removed]

23. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[UndertheOcean]

26. Was he really ? I did not know that .

[oberliner]

31. What is your source for that claim? nt

[tuvor]

46. This would suggest that you're talking out of your ass.

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/293986.html

[H2O Man]

61. clown

[marmar]

78. Hit and run idiocy, I see......

nt

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

9. George Bailey.

[oberliner]

10. He was a little tough on his kids

Yelling at his daughter like that - I mean, she needed to practice!

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

12. Hey... if fictional characters count what about Atticus Finch?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

13. Or Scout?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

15. x

[BrklynLiberal]

28. ahhhhhhhhh. Atticus Finch! Great nominee.

[Liquorice]

43. How about the woman who created Atticus, Harper Lee. nt

[Posteritatis]

11. Leaning towards Norman Borlaug. (nt)

[OilPastelsArtist]

98. I had to google that name :(

[Sebastian Doyle]

14. Franklin Delano Roosevelt

for defeating fascists at home and abroad.

Yeah, the whole "rounding up Japanese Americans and locking them up in concentration camps" was a major fuckup. But it's really the only bad thing I could say about him.

He saved this country. And it remained "saved" until the Bush Crime Family and the DLC started systematically tearing down everything he did, over the last 30 years. :evilfrown:

[white_wolf]

72. A good choice.

What about Truman though? He was also very good.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

16. Ted Overton.

He didn't get much pub.

[taterguy]

18. Dudley Bradley

[NCarolinawoman]

103. Dudley Bradley of UNC basketball fame?

LOL. My sister tutored him while a student there.:spray:

[OmahaBlueDog]

19. Albert Einstein or Jonas Salk

[Warpy]

22. Albert Schweitzer is up there, too

For the female half of the human race, there were a series of scientists: Russell Marker, Gregory Pincus, Min Chueh Chang and other researchers who came up with the oral contraceptives that liberated us from having no control over our fertility and hence, our lives. It's hard to overstate what that meant to women over the last 50 years, including women in the developing world who have been able to get them when they are worn out and want no more children.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

20. In purely RELATIVE terms Khrushchev deserves a weird mention

I am not suggesting that Khrushchev was even in the top 50% of people of the 20th century, but all virtue is relative to your time and place.

Many genuinely good people owned slaves, opposed women voting, etc., etc.

How good was someone compared to the world around her?

In terms of relative virtue the change from Stalin to Khrushchev was incredible. From pure monster to average soviet dictator.

Khrushchev helped assassinate Beria (important), exposed Stalin (incredibly important), and never did nuke anybody.

And he seemed to have some sort of moral sense about mass slaughter... like backing off in the Cuban missile crisis. Actually had a bit of a nervous breakdown when he took power and the true capabilities of the H-bomb were explained to him.

Invading Hungary? Yeah... welll nobody's perfect.

Bad guy, yet in relative terms a good development for the world versus any of the other contenders for the job.

[T Wolf]

39. Thank you for the perspective. By many criteria, NK deserved a Nobel Peace Prize

more than Henry the K.

He did not start "the big one" during very dangerous times. And you know that his military was yelling "Launch" in his ears as much or more than the US military did it to our Presidents.

[BOG PERSON]

45. khrushchev : stalin ::

donkey : dead lion

[Crabby Appleton]

21. Tie - Alexander Fleming - Jonas Salk nt

[Warren DeMontague]

25. It's a toss-up between Albert Einstein and Jerry Garcia.

:hippie:

[Mudoria]

27. FDR

[LWolf]

29. There are WAY too many to choose from.

And so many that most of us have probably never even heard of.

One that floats to the top for me is Ghandi.

[raouldukelives]

30. What? No votes for Ronald Reagan?

Guess I'll go with that Ghandi guy.

[BrklynLiberal]

32. That is a very interesting and thought provoking question..have to give it some careful

consideration..
So many who did so much....but THE BEST..May even be someone we have never even heard of..

Guess FDR made the most impact as far as what we see today...but what about those that influenced him...Eleanor Roosevelt for instance.

[TheBigotBasher]

33. Mother Theresa?

[ThomWV]

34. Alexander Fleming

[Wednesdays]

35. Are we talking "good," as in benefiting mankind the most?

Then can I suggest a husband-wife team? Franklin and Eleanor.




If I had to choose between them, I'd have to pick Franklin...but it's not a slam-dunk. I'd take either of them.



And Gandhi is way up there too, IMHO.

[Odin2005]

36. Gandhi

[another saigon]

38. Howard Zinn

hands down!

[Liquorice]

40. FDR nt

[BOG PERSON]

41. The men and women of the Red Army n/t

[Ohio Joe]

42. Ohio Joe

oh wait... he's a douchebag. Lets go with MLK.

[lumberjack_jeff]

44. Smedley Butler. n/t

[rbrnmw]

47. As far as Politicians go I would say FDR otherwise

Martin Luther King

[immoderate]

48. Louis Armstrong

--imm

[The Second Stone]

49. I'll go with Mohandas K. Ghandi

He was racist early in his career in South Africa as to blacks, but he overcame this shortcoming to be a pretty good guy.

Second would be FDR because he pisses off Republicans 65 years after he died. Oh, and beat Hitler and Tojo at the same time and lead us through the Great Depression.

[northofdenali]

50. John Lennon. n/t

[NoPasaran]

51. My Mom

[Donnachaidh]

53. the chinese citizen who faced down tanks in tienamen square.

There was a hero who wasn't looking for a photo-op.

[nevergiveup]

55. Good answer

The ordinary world citizen who risks it all for something much bigger. Rosa Parks also comes to mind. There are many and they in their individual bravery, without any thought of publicity, changed mankind.

[BOG PERSON]

54. neda...

[stevedeshazer]

56. Huey Long.

No one politician did more to drive the American voter left than Huey.

God bless Huey Long.

[Little Star]

57. FDR

[Recursion]

58. Somebody we've never heard of; a nun gunned down in Argentina

or a mother killed in the Congo. Probably a woman, and probably buried in an unmarked grave.

[BOG PERSON]

59. is that so?

the best person of the 20th century is anonymous, victimized womanhood?

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

60. Gandhi

[H2O Man]

62. Two choices:

Malcolm X and/or Onondaga Chief Paul Waterman.

[BOG PERSON]

63. che guevara

he wasnt a great military strategist or a great statesman but he was a symbol of rebel machismo and personal sacrifice and anticolonialism and a bunch of other nice things that have since been smothered by the wet blanket of history

[hyphenate]

64. Best person is defined so loosely that it must be delineated

in some ways in order to make any sense.

It's sort of like the Nobel Prize, or a Pulitzer, or an Oscar, or an Emmy. You can't compare apples and oranges, because they're too different things entirely, but you can grade an apple against another apple.

In politics, I would nominate Franklin Roosevelt as Best Person. His legacy cannot be equaled, especially with the changes he produced for the majority of Americans.

In science, I would consider Aleander Fleming, the discoverer of penecillin, as it changed many different medical protocol in eliminating some bacteria, and greatly weakening others.

In writing, my choice would be Ernest Hemingway. His writing style had a major influence on so many writers since.

In entertainment, my personal choice is Gene Roddenberry. Gene created a future world which gave hope and solace to many people, especially those wracked by visions of endless wars.



I'm sure there are many other fields I could define, but I'll stop right here. :)

[Spider Jerusalem]

65. Best? Or greatest? Different things entirely.

Greatest in terms of contribution to humanity, in terms of influence on the course of events? There are a few debatable candidates there; in science, Einstein, obviously, but also Alexander Fleming and Alan Turing; in politics, Gandhi for his doctrine of nonviolent resistance, and Winston Churchill for inspiring Britain to fight rather than negotiating peace with Germany in 1940 (and very possibly thereby greatly changing the subsequent course of history beyond measure).

[applegrove]

66. Nelson Mandela.

[Tsiyu]

67. Stevie Ray Vaughan

or Buddy Holly

[AsahinaKimi]

68. Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry

Creator of Star Trek

[wickerwoman]

70. Jimmy Carter would make my short list

OK, he didn't really turn around the dog of an economy that he inherited, but he did found Habitat for Humanity and worked his ass off for peace in the Middle East and was generally a mensch to people who didn't always deserve it.

[white_wolf]

71. hmm if were doing fictional chars

what about Frodo? or even better his creator Tolkien. I loved his writings especially his letters against Nazism.

[Radical Activist]

74. Another vote for Gandhi

Both for his own actions and his influence beyond death.

[Erose999]

77. Heres my short list: Jacques Derridas, Michel Foucault, MLK, Carl Sagan, Iggy Pop.

[tishaLA]

101. Mr Derrida is now going to write a book about the "s" you added to his name

Cuz he's just that gosh darned good.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

80. Stanislav Petrov

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/09/dayintech_0926

[Cal33]

81. Mahatma Gandhi. nt

[Uncle Joe]

83. Al Gore

Thanks for the thread, Kurt_and_Hunter.

[cynatnite]

84. Atticus Finch n/t

[karynnj]

85. Raoul Wallenberg and others who risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis

There likely were people who did the same with regards to Pol Pot or Rwanda.

Also people like two nuns in Chicago, who started a mission to house some of the Central Americans, who needed refuge from our policies in Central America. This volunteer organization still exists to help homeless women and their kids (usually Hispanic and usually victims of domestic abuse.) The volunteers that run it - all graduates of good colleges - live there and get a less than $100 monthly stipend.

By my personal definition of "best", it is very likely that the "best" person might be unknown outside his/her community.

Many on the list are people who did great good - and many rose to positions from which they could do great good. (Gore and Carter were not really forces for good throughout their most active careers. (Carter had a LT Calley Day hen he returned to GA and Gore supported the right wing Contras. ) Every politician has flaws and ambition acts to exaggerate them. If I had to pick a US politician - what about Father Drinan.

[Uncle Joe]

86. I disagree, Gore did great good during his career.

His early warnings about the threat of global warming climate change, coupled with the greatest complimentary partial solution; to that threat against humanity, his political advocacy for opening up the First Amendment empowering Internet to the people.

It's like someone once said, "If you give a someone a fish, you feed them for a day, if you teach them how to fish, you feed them for life."

If anything gives humanity the ability to wake up, realize, correlate and initiate critical ideas to avoid the worst effects of global warming climate change, it will be the Internet.

If the greatest evil is personified by someone willing do destroy humanity, I see the greatest good in someone trying to save it, so I have no problem with choosing Gore; flaws and all.

I would also say on Jimmy Carter's behalf, he's the only President to successfully persuade Israel to sign a peace treaty; which is still in force to this day and his early advocacy for sustainable energy was greatly under-appreciated.

[karynnj]

87. I agree that Carter's Camp David treaty was good and I agree that Gore

did great work educating people on global warming. As to the "greatest complimentary partial solution" - I have no idea what you are speaking of. I saw Gore testify before both Boxer's committee and Kerry's and there he did not present a solution that was any more significant than ones presented by Kerry himself, Markey or Waxman or Boxer and Cantwell. On the international side, we are not the leaders - and Kerry was more useful at Bali. (Gore's work on Kyoto produced a product that was never submitted to the Senate to ratify - because it was clear from a vote 4 months before that no treaty that did not deal with the third world countries would pass. In addition, it had no way to compensate countries in international trade for complying. The Bali agreement that all would have constraints, but they would be different was major. That is why Waxman/Markey and even the Senate bill had FAR more support than the Kyoto treaty would have.

Also, until he was out of office, he really was not a hero on free speech - he was the force behind the telecommunications Act.

But, you missed my point - they asked for best person - not the one who contributed the most. That's why I spoke of soem who made selfless decisions. Note - I did not list ANY politicians.

[Uncle Joe]

113. The "greatest complimentary partial solution" is the Internet; itself.

Gore not only warned about the looming catastrophe of global warming climate change, when he championed the opening of the Internet to the people, a framework for solutions to this humanity threatening crisis, was created on multiple levels.

Those levels being of communication, education, information, transportation, political and collaborative synergy.

As for the Telecommunications Act of 96, I didn't care for much of it either but it was a trade off in order to expand the Internet in to schools and rural areas; of the nation that were not connected. The Clinton Administration was dealing with a Republican controlled Congress and I believe Gore viewed expansion of the Internet as the long term solution.

Re; the issue of best and who contributed the most, I believe Gore to be a visionary; he knew what his contributions could and would do, so again I see his work as major advancements for the ultimate public good; survival of the human species.

If Adolph Hitler is considered the personification of evil for destroying life, then saving the most life must be good and I don't believe at this juncture in the space time continuum, that we can get any more most than everybody on planet Earth, therefor I choose Gore as best person.

[Cal33]

88. And Carter is a decent human being -- that rare quality missing

in so many of today's politicians.

[karynnj]

114. I woul;d argue that many are

Certainly John and Teresa Kerry are.

[PanoramaIsland]

89. Best by what measure? Things like this are impossible - but Emma Goldman deserves a mention. n/t

[TransitJohn]

91. Bob Dylan. n/t

n/t

[WCGreen]

92. Woody Guthrie and the Depression Photographers....

People who went out to tell the story of what was happening in this great big country of ours...

[Kaleva]

93. Probably someone few, if any, of us heard of.

[Mendocino]

94. Aldo Leopold

[Steely_Dan]

95. FDR - Without a Doubt n/t

[Douglas Carpenter]

99. without a doubt - Soviet naval commander Vasili Arkhipov

Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (Russian: Василий Александрович Архипов - 30 January 1926–1999) was a Soviet naval officer. During the Cuban Missile Crisis he prevented the launch of a nuclear torpedo and therefore a possible nuclear war. His story is to this day unknown to the wider public, although some believe that (as the director of the National Security Archive Thomas Blanton expressed it in 2002) "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world".

On October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a group of eleven United States Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph trapped a nuclear-armed Soviet Foxtrot class submarine B-59 near Cuba and started dropping practice depth charges, explosives intended to force the submarine to come to the surface for identification. Allegedly, the captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believing that a war might already have started, prepared to launch a retaliatory nuclear-tipped torpedo.

Three officers on board the submarine — Savitsky, the Political Officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and the Second in command Arkhipov — were authorized to launch the torpedo if they agreed unanimously in favor of doing so. An argument broke out among the three, in which only Arkhipov was against the launch, eventually persuading Savitsky to surface the submarine and await orders from Moscow. The nuclear warfare which presumably would have ensued was thus averted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov

[Barack2theFuture]

100. FDR

[NCarolinawoman]

102. Rachel Carson

Her trail-blazing book, SILENT SPRING, launched the contemporary environmental movement.

It wasn't easy. She had to take on all all those lobbyists from the chemical and agricultural industries, who were drunk on power and government subsidies. They hated her and were out to get her. Rachel Carson was one gutsy human being and a true visionary.

[Mendocino]

105. When I awake and hear the birds,

I thank her for her courage and foresight. She is in the pantheon with Aldo Leopold, John Muir and Thoreau.

[JCMach1]

110. Jonas Salk comes to mind...

[DailyGrind51]

111. I have to agree with the FDR nomination!

FDR managed a full plate, despite his physical handicap.

[ceile]

115. Ghandi