On Tue, 21 Nov 2006 19:15:08 GMT, Harry Hope
ix.netcom.com>
wrote:
>
>From The Atlantic Monthly -- December 2006
>
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200612/influentials
>
>The Top 100
>
>The most influential figures in American history.
>
>1 Abraham Lincoln
>He saved the Union, freed the slaves, and presided over AmericaÂ’s
>second founding.
He also said not long before he died that he feared that he
had "accomplished nothing".
>
>2 George Washington
>He made the United States possible—not only by defeating a king, but
>by declining to become one himself.
Yet despite being one of the men who agreed that all men were
created equal, was a slave owner.
>
>3 Thomas Jefferson
>The author of the five most important words in American history: “All
>men are created equal.”
" ", except he's the guy who wrote it. Of course, the liberals
don't like this being said, but they think he was racially liberal
because he had Black mistresses.
>
>4 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
>He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and then he
>proved it.
There was a US admiral who served in Hawaii who, when hearing
of the attack on Pearl Harbor said "Well, now the son of a bitch has
killed my son". He was referring to FDR. He couldn't prove that FDR
killed his son, although I did watch an interview with the men who
operated the radar station where the Japanese ships were spotted.
They informed their superiors, and they were assured that
everyone up to and including the president had been informed shortly
thereafter. Yet, the planes were all neatly lined up on the tarmac
when the first wave came over the mountains and descended to attack
Pearl Harbor.
Interestingly, although a lot of people think of Japan as the
belligerent nation that started WW II, the Japanese part of the war
actually started when the US government in the late '20s issued a
statement to the government of imperial Japan to the effect that they
must unconditionally acknowledge the sole right of the US to
exploration for resources in Southeast Asia.
>
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>Also see:
>
>In Their Own Words
>Of the 100 Americans selected by our panel of historians, thirty-one
>contributed to The Atlantic. Browse a selection of their writings.
>
>5 Alexander Hamilton
>Soldier, banker, and political scientist, he set in motion an agrarian
>nationÂ’s transformation into an industrial power.
And sabotaged the constitution's wording at the last moment to
make it sound as though the document only meant that militia's would
have the right to "bear arms".
>
>6 Benjamin Franklin
>The Founder-of-all-trades— scientist, printer, writer, diplomat,
>inventor, and more; like his country, he contained multitudes.
>
>7 John Marshall
>The defining chief justice, he established the Supreme Court as the
>equal of the other two federal branches.
>
>8 Martin Luther King Jr.
>His dream of racial equality is still elusive, but no one did more to
>make it real.
>
>9 Thomas Edison
>It wasnÂ’t just the lightbulb; the Wizard of Menlo Park was the most
>prolific inventor in American history.
>
>10 Woodrow Wilson
>He made the world safe for U.S. interventionism, if not for democracy.
>
>11 John D. Rockefeller
>The man behind Standard Oil set the mold for our tycoons—first by
>making money, then by giving it away.
He also educated his sons about his business philosophy:
"Competition is a sin".
>
>12 Ulysses S. Grant
>He was a poor president, but he was the general Lincoln needed; he
>also wrote the greatest political memoir in American history.
>
>13 James Madison
>He fathered the Constitution and wrote the Bill of Rights.
>
>14 Henry Ford
>He gave us the assembly line and the Model T, and sparked AmericaÂ’s
>love affair with the automobile.
>
>15 Theodore Roosevelt
>Whether busting trusts or building canals, he embodied the “strenuous
>life” and blazed a trail for twentieth-century America.
>
>16 Mark Twain
>Author of our national epic, he was the most unsentimental observer of
>our national life.
>
>17 Ronald Reagan
>The amiable architect of both the conservative realignment and the
>Cold WarÂ’s end.
In effect, if not in intent, the first "neo con" president. He
came to DC with supposedly genuine conservative values, thought the
military shouldn't be so huge, or take up so much public money, etc.
Then after he got shot changed his views radically, etc.
Also a very bad environmental record. That's what happens when
you first try to get congress to roll back pollution controls, and
when that doesn't work you simply cut the budget of the EPA.
>
>18 Andrew Jackson
>The first great populist: he found America a republic and left it a
>democracy.
>
>19 Thomas Paine
>The voice of the American Revolution, and our first great radical.
>
>20 Andrew Carnegie
>The original self-made man forged AmericaÂ’s industrial might and
>became one of the nationÂ’s greatest philanthropists.
>
>21 Harry Truman
>An accidental president, this machine politician ushered in the Atomic
>Age and then the Cold War.
Uh, yeah... I think there might be some people who would
therefore object to his inclusion. Anyway, the decision to drop the
atomic bomb on Japan was utterly unnecessary.
>
>22 Walt Whitman
>He sang of America and shaped the countryÂ’s conception of itself.
>
>23 Wright Brothers
>They got us all off the ground.
>
>24 Alexander Graham Bell
>By inventing the telephone, he opened the age of telecommunications
>and shrank the world.
>
>25 John Adams
>His leadership made the American Revolution possible; his devotion to
>republicanism made it succeed.
>
>26 Walt Disney
>The quintessential entertainer-entrepreneur, he wielded unmatched
>influence over our childhood.
>
>27 Eli Whitney
>His gin made cotton king and sustained an empire for slavery.
Sustaining an empire for slavery, I would think, probably
ought to preclude him from being on the list, unless you want to
segregate him (pun intended) into the "negatively influential" crowd.
>
>28 Dwight Eisenhower
>He won a war and two elections, and made everybody like Ike.
He called Patton and told him to let the Soviets take Berlin,
thus setting the stage for the Cold War.
>
>29 Earl Warren
>His Supreme Court transformed American society and bequeathed to us
>the culture wars.
And his joke of a commission has allowed conspiracy theorists
wet dreams about what angles they'll be able to work.
>
>30 Elizabeth Cady Stanton
>One of the first great American feminists, she fought for social
>reform and womenÂ’s right to vote.
>
>31 Henry Clay
>One of AmericaÂ’s greatest legislators and orators, he forged
>compromises that held off civil war for decades.
>
>32 Albert Einstein
>His greatest scientific work was done in Europe, but his humanity
>earned him undying fame in America.
>
>33 Ralph Waldo Emerson
>The bard of individualism, he relied on himself—and told us all to do
>the same.
>
>34 Jonas Salk
>His vaccine for polio eradicated one of the worldÂ’s worst plagues.
>
>35 Jackie Robinson
>He broke baseballÂ’s color barrier and embodied integrationÂ’s promise.
>
>36 William Jennings Bryan
>“The Great Commoner” lost three presidential elections, but his
>populism transformed the country.
>
>37 J. P. Morgan
>The great financier and banker was the prototype for all the Wall
>Street barons who followed.
If he was decent at all, he was not the prototype for at least
90+%% of them.
>
>38 Susan B. Anthony
>She was the countryÂ’s most eloquent voice for womenÂ’s equality under
>the law.
>
>39 Rachel Carson
>The author of Silent Spring was godmother to the environmental
>movement.
>
>40 John Dewey
>He sought to make the public school a training ground for democratic
>life.
>
>41 Harriet Beecher Stowe
>Her Uncle TomÂ’s Cabin inspired a generation of abolitionists and set
>the stage for civil war.
??? You think the civil war was fought to free slaves? There
is no point to be made here. If Americans are foolish enough to
believe that horseshit, they'll believe anything.
The US civil war was fought so the businessmen of the North
would be in charge of the country instead of the agribusinessmen of
the South. That's the bottom line.
>
>42 Eleanor Roosevelt
>She used the first lady’s office and the mass media to become “first
>lady of the world.”
You mean she used US assets to aggrandize herself? No wonder a
lot of people thought Hillary was similar to some degree.
>
>43 W. E. B. DuBois
>One of America’s great intellectuals, he made the “problem of the
>color line” his life’s work.
>
>44 Lyndon Baines Johnson
>His brilliance gave us civil-rights laws; his stubbornness gave us
>Vietnam.
The civil rights laws were inevitable, and Johnson was still
against them when Kennedy had already been backing them.
And it wasn't his stubbornness that gave the US Vietnam, it
was politics.
>
>45 Samuel F. B. Morse
>Before the Internet, there was Morse code.
>
>46 William Lloyd Garrison
>Through his newspaper, The Liberator, he became the voice of
>abolition.
>
>47 Frederick Douglass
>After escaping from slavery, he pricked the nationÂ’s conscience with
>an eloquent accounting of its crimes.
>
>48 Robert Oppenheimer
>The father of the atomic bomb and the regretful midwife of the nuclear
>era.
>
>49 Frederick Law Olmsted
>The genius behind New YorkÂ’s Central Park, he inspired the greening of
>AmericaÂ’s cities.
>
>50 James K. Polk
>This one-term presidentÂ’s Mexican War landgrab gave us California,
>Texas, and the Southwest.
Not for perpetuity, apparently.
>
>51 Margaret Sanger
>The ardent champion of birth control—and of the sexual freedom that
>came with it.
And an unrepentant nazi sympathizer who also said that "80%% of
Americans are idiots". By the way, most people don't trust people who
don't feel safe around people who respect themselves. That's why kids
didn't hang with Marg.
>
>52 Joseph Smith
>The founder of Mormonism, AmericaÂ’s most famous homegrown faith.
A lunatic who believed that Jesus Christ came to America and
left the book of Mormon...
>
>53 Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
>Known as “The Great Dissenter,” he wrote Supreme Court opinions that
>continue to shape American jurisprudence.
>
>54 Bill Gates
>The Rockefeller of the Information Age, in business and philanthropy
>alike.
Have you seen Windows Vista, or read about it?
>
>55 John Quincy Adams
>The Monroe DoctrineÂ’s real author, he set nineteenth-century AmericaÂ’s
>diplomatic course.
>
>56 Horace Mann
>His tireless advocacy of universal public schooling earned him the
>title “The Father of American Education.”
>
>57 Robert E. Lee
>He was a good general but a better symbol, embodying conciliation in
>defeat.
>
>58 John C. Calhoun
>The voice of the antebellum South, he was slaveryÂ’s most ardent
>defender.
>
>59 Louis Sullivan
>The father of architectural modernism, he shaped the defining American
>building: the skyscraper.
>
>60 William Faulkner
>The most gifted chronicler of AmericaÂ’s tormented and fascinating
>South.
>
>61 Samuel Gompers
>The countryÂ’s greatest labor organizer, he made the golden age of
>unions possible.
>
>62 William James
>The mind behind Pragmatism, AmericaÂ’s most important philosophical
>school.
>
>63 George Marshall
>As a general, he organized the American effort in World War II; as a
>statesman, he rebuilt Western Europe.
>
>64 Jane Addams
>The founder of Hull House, she became the secular saint of social
>work.
>
>65 Henry David Thoreau
>The original American dropout, he has inspired seekers of authenticity
>for 150 years.
>
>66 Elvis Presley
>The king of rock and roll. Enough said.
>
>67 P. T. Barnum
>The circus impresarioÂ’s taste for spectacle paved the way for
>blockbuster movies and reality TV.
>
>68 James D. Watson
>He codiscovered DNAÂ’s double helix, revealing the code of life to
>scientists and entrepreneurs alike.
>
>69 James Gordon Bennett
>As the founding publisher of The New York Herald, he invented the
>modern American newspaper.
>
>70 Lewis and Clark
>They went west to explore, and millions followed in their wake.
>
>71 Noah Webster
>He didnÂ’t create American English, but his dictionary defined it.
>
>72 Sam Walton
>He promised us “Every Day Low Prices,” and we took him up on the
>offer.
>
>73 Cyrus McCormick
>His mechanical reaper spelled the end of traditional farming, and the
>beginning of industrial agriculture.
>
>74 Brigham Young
>What Joseph Smith founded, Young preserved, leading the Mormons to
>their promised land.
>
>75 George Herman “Babe” Ruth
>He saved the national pastime in the wake of the Black Sox scandal—and
>permanently linked sports and celebrity.
>
>76 Frank Lloyd Wright
>AmericaÂ’s most significant architect, he was the archetype of the
>visionary artist at odds with capitalism.
>
>77 Betty Friedan
>She spoke to the discontent of housewives everywhere—and inspired a
>revolution in gender roles.
>
>78 John Brown
>Whether a hero, a fanatic, or both, he provided the spark for the
>Civil War.
>
>79 Louis Armstrong
>His talent and charisma took jazz from the cathouses of Storyville to
>Broadway, television, and beyond.
>
>80 William Randolph Hearst
>The press baron who perfected yellow journalism and helped start the
>Spanish-American War.
>
>81 Margaret Mead
>With Coming of Age in Samoa, she made anthropology relevant—and
>controversial.
>
>82 George Gallup
>He asked Americans what they thought, and the politicians listened.
>
>83 James Fenimore Cooper
>The novels are unreadable, but he was the first great mythologizer of
>the frontier.
>
>84 Thurgood Marshall
>As a lawyer and a Supreme Court justice, he was the legal architect of
>the civil-rights revolution.
>
>85 Ernest Hemingway
>His spare style defined American modernism, and his life made machismo
>a cliché.
>
>86 Mary Baker Eddy
>She got off her sickbed and founded Christian Science, which promised
>spiritual healing to all.
>
>87 Benjamin Spock
>With a single book—and a singular approach—he changed American
>parenting.
>
>88 Enrico Fermi
>A giant of physics, he helped develop quantum theory and was
>instrumental in building the atomic bomb.
>
>89 Walter Lippmann
>The last man who could swing an election with a newspaper column.
>
>90 Jonathan Edwards
>Forget the fire and brimstone: his subtle eloquence made him the
>countryÂ’s most influential theologian.
>
>91 Lyman Beecher
>Harriet Beecher StoweÂ’s clergyman father earned fame as an
>abolitionist and an evangelist.
>
>92 John Steinbeck
>As the creator of Tom Joad, he chronicled Depression-era misery.
>
>93 Nat Turner
>He was the most successful rebel slave; his specter would stalk the
>white South for a century.
>
>94 George Eastman
>The founder of Kodak democratized photography with his handy rolls of
>film.
>
>95 Sam Goldwyn
>A producer for forty years, he was the first great Hollywood mogul.
>
>96 Ralph Nader
>He made the cars we drive safer; thirty years later, he made George W.
>Bush the president.
>
>97 Stephen Foster
>America’s first great songwriter, he brought us “O! Susanna” and “My
>Old Kentucky Home.”
>
>98 Booker T. Washington
>As an educator and a champion of self-help, he tried to lead black
>America up from slavery.
>
>99 Richard Nixon
>He broke the New Deal majority, and then broke his presidency on a
>scandal that still haunts America.
>
>100 Herman Melville
>Moby Dick was a flop at the time, but Melville is remembered as the
>American Shakespeare.
>
>______________________________________________________
>
>For more lists, and information about how the selections were made.
>
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200612/influentials-main
>
>Your Turn: Who are the Most Influential Americans?
>
http://www.theatlantic.com/influentials/follow-up.mhtml
>
>Harry
