Our list of 25 Worst Figures In American History

[47of74]

By now many of you have probably heard of how the right wing has their own list of their 25 Worst Figures In American History.

So now I am curious as to who we here at DU would consider the 25 Worst Figures In American History?

Since I asked, I'll start. Here, in no particular order, is my list;

Newt Gingrich
Richard D. Cheney
Tom DeLay
Steve King
Peter King
Bishop Thomas Olmsted
Cardinal Bernard Law
Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke
George W. Bush
Ronald Reagan
Richard Nixon
George Allen Reckers
Jerry Falwell
Pat Robertson
"Doctor" Laura Schlessinger
Sean Hannity
Bill O'Reilly
James Dobson
Hal Turner
Tim McVeigh
John Boehner
Eric Cantor
Sarah Palin
John McCain
Rush Limbaugh

[ThomWV]

1. Ronald Reagan - at the very top of the list

[mix]

4. Yep nt

[Radical Activist]

2. J. Edgar Hoover.

He's at the top. For decades he pushed the country toward fascism.

It's funny that the conservative blogger's list is almost entirely people who are living or are currently being dissed on talk radio. It shows a lack of historical knowledge or independent thought. But that's no surprise.

[Johonny]

37. I heard his figure looked great in a dress

or am I'm misinterpreting this thread :)

[theoldman]

3. Now that I look back, Nixon does not look so bad.

[izquierdista]

29. Wipe your glasses

With all the poo that has been flung by the right since he kicked the bucket, it's hard to remember that without Tricky, a lot of the others wouldn't be on the list. Like Cheney (an aide of his), Bush (son of an appointee of his), Pat Buchanan (a speechwriter of his), McCain (a "faithful soldier" of his), etc.

[sarge43]

5. Joe McCarthy

He destroyed many lives during his rampage.

[SargeUNN]

6. Glenn Beck

certainly belongs on the list

[IDemo]

7. Andrew Jackson must certainly be on the list n/t

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

21. I disagree

Andrew was a man of his time. The things he did, when he did them, were consistent with the norms and mores of the country at that time. He also, at least for a few years, wrested control of the Presidency from the wealthy and privileged class...........

[Bozita]

22. oops, wrong placement

[IDemo]

32. Genocide as a norm?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

39. We are judging him for actions in 1815 or whatever

based on our perceptions in 2010. T'aint fair.
I'm not saying "Hooray General for killing indians", I'm saying that was the prevailing feeling then and that's when he lived....

[OwnedByFerrets]

8. Replace Nixon with Raygun.

[sakabatou]

9. Raygun's already on the list

[Buns_of_Fire]

38. Well, he deserves two spots...

Just because.;-)

[Skidmore]

10. Make some room on that list. All those FOX media types

can be replaced with Rupert Murdoch, communication terrorist. A lot of those you listed in that category are just the minions. Start plugging in Poppy, Cheney, and a few other more deserving.

[marmar]

11. Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman

[valerief]

12. What about the wealthy families who own them? nt

[DBoon]

13. Henry Ford

Anti-Semite, brutally anti-union

[drm604]

14. The people on your list are all relatively contemporary.

What about people involved in the slave trade? What about major figures in the confederacy? What about those involved in genocide against native Americans?

I'm not excusing any of those on your list I just think that it shouldn't be confined to only the last 30 or 40 years.

[no_hypocrisy]

15. Alan Greenspan as a runner-up?

[indepat]

25. Greenspan, long dubbed on this board by yours truly as: a name which will live in

infamy. :)

[w8liftinglady]

33. Greenspan was a Rand student.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/business/15atlas.html
clip
One of Rand’s most famous devotees is Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, whose memoir, “The Age of Turbulence,” will be officially released Monday.

Mr. Greenspan met Rand when he was 25 and working as an economic forecaster. She was already renowned as the author of “The Fountainhead,” a novel about an architect true to his principles. Mr. Greenspan had married a member of Rand’s inner circle, known as the Collective, that met every Saturday night in her New York apartment. Rand did not pay much attention to Mr. Greenspan until he began praising drafts of “Atlas,” which she read aloud to her disciples, according to Jeff Britting, the archivist of Ayn Rand’s papers. He was attracted, Mr. Britting said, to “her moral defense of capitalism.”

[indepat]

36. Surely did not know, but not surprising: their collective handi-work/that type thinking has

contributed mightily to the cratering of the economy and collapse of the financial system saved, imo, only by the Federal government pouring in trillions of dollars to bail out the prime perpetrators. Only God and the Fed know just how many hundreds of billions of dollars the Fed has, in effect, gifted these rascals by removing essentially crap off their balance sheets so they can get back to business as usual, that of paying the multi-million dollar bonuses to the high-performers who, in no small part, contributed significantly to this mess. :P

[Ramulux]

16. Heres a pretty good list

1. Lee Harvey Oswald
2. Ronald Reagan
3. Alan Greenspan
4. Mark David Chapman
5. Richard Nixon
6. Robert E. Lee
7. George W. Bush
8. Henry Kissinger
9. John Roberts
10. Newt Gingrich
11. Charlie Manson
12. Sirhan Sirhan
13. John Wilkes Booth
14. James Earl Ray
15. Strom Thurmond
16. Zbignew Brezinski
18. Joe McCarthy
19. Rush Limbaugh
20. George H.W Bush

[47of74]

17. Yes, that is pretty good.

[Radical Activist]

18. A few others.

After J. Edgar Hoover...

Ronald Reagan - Thanks for our dependence on fossil fuels and supporting more acts of terrorism than Al-Qaeda.
George W. Bush
Rutherford Hayes
John C. Calhoun - The granddaddy of all Southern racist, obstructionist, conservative Senators.
Milton Friedman
Allan Pinkerton
Nathan Bedford Forrest - The Osama Bin-Laden of Southern terrorists.
Lee Raymond - Former Exxon-Mobil CEO who lead the fight to deny the science behind climate change and refused to pay for Exxon Valdez.

[DBoon]

20. Coors, Koch and Ahmanson

Financiers of the right wing

[Radical Activist]

31. Adolph Coors II and sons.

Yes, they belong on the list.

[okie]

19. Most of those people would not crack the top 1000

People like Rekers, Falwell, Olmstead, and the various Fox News/Talk radio personalities are not all that important, and their crimes will not be remembered.

A proper list would be very difficult to narrow down to 25, and it would be composed almost entirely of presidents (democrat and republican) and their corporate backers, with a few Kissinger types thrown in for good measure.

[Bozita]

23. Milton Friedman, Arthur Laffer, David Stockman

[KamaAina]

24. Father Coughlin

dark horse: Capt. Henry Wirz (google "Andersonville").

[Spider Jerusalem]

26. That list is just as ideologically biased and historically ignorant as the right-wing bloggers' list

Some of my nominations for 'worst people in American history':

John Wilkes Booth - his assassination of Lincoln changed the course of post-Civil War history, probably for the worst; Lincoln would likely have moderated the most radical elements of Reconstruction, and the horribly ineffectual Andrew Johnson would probably have never been President.

Aaron Burr - killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel (Hamilton apparently intended to delope, that is, to throw away his fire...if his own statements prior to the duel are to be believed; and he later was indicted for treason for his participation in a plot to create a 'new empire' in the West out of what was the Louisiana territory).

James Buchanan - the worst president, bar none, the US ever had; his inaction and indecision can be said to have led to the Civil War, and when the Southern states announced their secession, he did nothing.

Roger Brooke Taney - author of the majority opinion in the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford, which stated that 'a Negro has no rights under the Constitution' (possibly paraphrased, but that's the gist of it)

James Clark McReynolds - probably the worst Supreme Court justice in American history; openly bigoted and contemptuous of 'niggers', Jews, and women, refused to shake hands with Justices Cardozo, Brandeis, or Frankfurter, was described by almost all who knew him as eing one of the nastiest specimens of humanity you could have the misfortune of meeting.

Theodore Bilbo - arch-segregationist Mississippi Senator, who in 1946 called in a radio address for 'every red-blooded Anglo-Saxon man in Mississippi to resort to any means to keep hundreds of Negroes from the polls in the July 2 primary. And if you don’t know what that means, you are just not up to your persuasive measures'; who refused

Nathan Bedford Forrest -founder of the Ku Klux Klan; and Confederate troops under his command massacred black Union soldiers at Fort Pillow in 1864.

There are a lot of others, and as far as 'worst' goes the people on your list aren't even in the same league.

[Radical Activist]

27. What's with their obsession over soviet spies?

There's no evidence that any of them had a profound impact on US history. They're still fighting imaginary battles with cold war communists.

[drmeow]

28. Eric Rudolph

Randall Terry or whichever anti-abortion figure has aroused the most hatred against abortion providers even if they have not actually committed any direct violence.

[slampoet]

30. Harry J. Anslinger and William Randolph Hearst

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Randolph_Hearst

[Contrary1]

34. Ted Nugent deserves a spot...

Let's make the list longer.

[Spirochete]

35. Negroponte n/t

[blm]

40. POPPY BUSH, JACKSON STEPHENS, Kissinger, Baker, et al - btw...most on your list are just tools.

.

[saltpoint]

41. I'd include on such a list whichever army or government

official came up with the decision to sell smallpox-infested blankets to Native Americans.

Lester Maddox.

Jesse Helms.

The union-busting thugs who beat up working people.

The governors who authorized police dogs to thwart and intimidate men and women marching for their civil rights in Alabama.

Warren G. Harding.

Any half-wit U.S. governor who slaughters wolves from helicopters.

Anita Bryant, in some ways the patron saint of the Teabaggers.

The religious fundamentalist of the colonial era who accused some women of being witches, and harassed them accordingly.

Whoever pushed Natalie Wood overboard.

Then-Governor George W. Bush for mocking Fae Tucker.

The two assholes who beat Matthew Sheppard and left him die in Wyoming.

The (likely various) dark figures who conspired to murder John Kennedy.

The Ku Klux Klan -- this would be a lifetime achievement recognition.


and so on.

[alcibiades_mystery]

42. Dude, it says "History," not current affairs

Not a very historically astute list.

[Canuckistanian]

43. What's the criteria for the list?

Actual policy damage as an official?

Influential leadership?

Social movements?

"Lightning Rods"?

Historical figures?

Seems to me that there are many categories of "worst".