Posted on 12/30/2005 6:34:51 AM PST by rcocean
At first, this attorney-cum-supercop only wanted to make America safer, but in short order, this bureaucrat re-enacted every Machiavellian nightmare while transforming a backwater investigative office into the free world’s most effective police force. He became the closest thing America has ever known to an emperor and managed to die before his empire came crashing down around him. The tragedy of his life can be seen in his contradictions: a gay man who persecuted homosexuals; his undeniable love of country getting consumed by his thirst for power; his desire to enforce the law giving way to his paranoid domestic-espionage activities designed to derail political opponents, such as Martin Luther King and others he deemed dangerous.
For the unfettered power he garnered through his Orwellian efforts and his reflexive use of blackmail to maintain that power -- a power which cowed presidents and Congresses alike for decades -- Hoover is, I believe, the obvious choice of worst American in national history.
Here is Ed's Comments (slightly edited) on McCarthy and Nixon:
#6: Richard Nixon
The only president to resign his office in disgrace, although perhaps not the only president who should have done so. Nixon, like his contemporaries Hoover and McCarthy, presented such a classically tragic figure for the good that he tried to do. In the end, the tremendous damage he did eclipsed all of that, including the famous Opening of Red China. He abused his power for his own sake, using the FBI and the CIA to attack his enemies, real and imagined. His abuses, in fact, color our ability to defend the nation to this day. His legacy lives on in the Gorelick Wall, in the FISA warrant issue, in special prosecutors like Patrick Fitzgerald; Nixon brought a plague onto the body politic that will last for decades to come. Although he later rehabilitated himself somewhat, the damage he did in his presidency may never really end.
#7: Joe McCarthy
Tail-gunner Joe had all of the same qualities of Greek tragedy as Hoover, but on a much shorter time scale. Originally seeking to root out the Communists from the US government – which the Verona intercepts would later prove was a very real threat – McCarthy singlehandedly destroyed the credibility of the anti-Communist effort through demagoguery, lies, and character assassination. McCarthy embodied the result of what happens when people use the ends to justify all means. In the end, his behavior on television shocked the nation and freed the Senate to finally censure him, but more tragically than that, it led an entire generation to dismiss Communist infiltration as a threat to the security of the nation. He has long been Hollywood’s bete noir, although most of the so-called blacklisting came from the efforts of the House Un-American Activities Committee, not the Senate. (McCarthy’s focus was on the federal bureaucracy and the Army, not Hollywood.)
My list would be different, and would include FDR, Woodrow Wilson, Alger Hiss, LBJ, and Huey Long.
Kind of a stupid list.
Not sure that I agree with anyone on his list except John Walker.
Where's Tookie? The dude founded the Crips; how many people have been killed as a result of that?
Alger Hiss, I agree with that one.
I have some: Benjamin Franklin, Jefferson Davis, the Rosenbergs, Ted Hall, Alger Hiss, John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvery Oswald, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jimmy Carter, Frank Church, Ramsey Clark, John Walker Lindh, etc...
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
One would do well to see what NBF's contemporaries had to say about the man, as well as blacks that knew him said about him.
This fellow Ed is no conservative. He lists McCarthy and Nixon as two of his worst Americans. I think Ed is a ill informed liberal left Democrat from what I see.
Bill and Hillary Clinton surely have earned a high spot on the list.
Franklin and Jefferson as the "Worst Americans"?!?!?!?
What are you smoking??
Ben Franklin??
If he thinks Hoover is the "worst" american, than he knows little about history.
Ben Franklin? .......He's my #1 BEST american.
Davis does belong on that list though.
Mistake. See my other post.
You still didn't explain Jeffereson being on the list...
Thank GOD. I'd have to disown ya!
Harry reid, Nancy pelosi, John Murtha, John Kerry, Howard Dean, The Clinotns and Algore should be on the list.
McCarthy and the Verona intercepts -- has he got the right McCarthy? (no pun intended)
Which Verona?
Verona, Illinois
Verona, Maine
Verona Township, Michigan
Verona Township, Minnesota
Verona, Mississippi
Verona, Missouri
Verona, New Jersey
Verona Township, New Jersey
Verona, New York
Verona, North Dakota
Verona, Ohio
Verona, Pennsylvania
Verona, Virginia
Verona, Wisconsin
Verona (town), Wisconsin
McCarthy destroyed the credibility of the anti-Communist effort
More than fifty years later you tell me! Why were tens of millions of us wasting our time back then? Wow! If we had only known that we'd been destroyed already we could of relaxed a little bit.
Hoover, McCarthy, Nixon? To make the modern list you have to be well known as anti-Communist? To populate the list you consult left wing agitation exclusively? You judge how telegenic they were? How often they did not smile? What?
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