Posted on 09/28/2011 11:28:27 PM PDT by Steelers6
Who do you regard as the absolute best President in America's history? Abraham Lincoln 36% Thomas Jefferson 14% George Washington 31% Franklin Roosevelt 2% Someone else 17% 11676 total votes
I don't even know if we have "public squares" anymore, and if we do, they're most probably full of screaming, silly liberals.
But if we did, he (or she as the case may be) most surely would have been.
Yeah, that “alliance” with China sure has worked out well, hasn’t it? We’ve gone from not speaking to the Chi-coms to being their largest debtor in juts over 40 years. Meanwhile, we’re helping them build a blue water navy and gave them the technology necessary to weaponize space.
Why in the world would anyone even be interested in BOR’s opinion about anything.
Did you see him begging to pay higher taxes last night on his show? I believe he was standing behind the door when brains were being given out.
Over the years I’ve come to the point that I can’t stand the guy. I was going through the channels last night and accidentally made the mistake of hitting his show as I passed through.
Again, isn't that what war is? In World War I, the Allies tried a blockade to starve the German and Austrian populations into surrender. In World War II, the Allies bombed Axis cities to the ground, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process. And once the war was over, the Allies poured billions into reconstructing the very countries they spent billions destroying. Yet those were considered legitimate war aims and acceptable political policies. But the Southern states are somehow supposed to be immune from the fallout of the war that they themselves began. And attempts to bind the country afterwards are frowned upon.
slavery would have run it’s course long before the 20th century. think about it, with the cheap irish and chinese labour at the time, and their willingness to work hard to keep a job, slaves were a waste.
a slave was a huge investment. you had to feed, clothe, provide medical attention when needed, and guard them so they didn’t escape. also, they were only motivated to work just hard enough to not get punished.
a chinese or irish immigrant on the other hand, had to work as hard as they could to keep a job, for pennies a week, and if they got hurt or sick they either kept working, or were fired and the next guy in line was hired.
Lincoln would be held in better regard but for being assassinated. Johnson, Lincoln’s VP, pretty much scraped Lincoln’s post war plans for bringing the north and south back together without acrimony. As a result of the assassination, the problems, continuing to this day, stemming from the civil war are the fault of a Democrat, Johnson.
Palin! Oh, wait, that hasn’t happened...yet!
Washington, Lincoln, TR, and Reagan are my top 4...
Jefferson, perhaps surprisingly, was a very good president. He might be the best of them. I used to say Washington was best, until I learned that the Federalists wrecked what was best about the United States. Madison was an awful president. So was Adams.
Jefferson was a small-government guy, but not quite an anti-federalist, probably because he was friends with Madison. Madison was an incoherent flip-flopper who changed his mind the way most people change their underwear.
If you take ideology out of it, the correct answers are Washington, Lincoln, FDR. These three were the most consequential presidents by far.
Surprised that TR gets so many picks on a conservative forum. Not exactly the conservative gold standard.
Actually Johnson was all for continuing Lincoln's post-war plans to bring the nation back together. It was the Radical Republicans in Congress who derailed Lincoln's plan to "let 'em up easy".
Quite right. There’s really no argument about this. Past is prologue. Washington was sui generis, the sine qua non of America. To be sure Lincoln saved the Union, but there would have been no Union to save, except for Washington. As one of his biographers put it, Washington was the Indispensible Man.
BTW, Huck, not to pry, but what type of musician are you? Would I know of you?
Washington. He held the states together and he resisted temptation. He could have been KING!
Leading up to the Philly convention, Washington, who didn't know much about government, relied on two guys to school him--Hamilton and Madison. Madison back then was a hard-core Federalist, which is why his early political ally was Hamilton.
In Washington's administration, his most trusted guy was Hamilton without a doubt. I think some of it had to do with the fact that Hamilton fought in the war with Washington, whereas the others did not.
But also because Hamilton's big government, centralizing ideology squared with Washington's own inclinations. Washington didn't want to be king. But he DID want a strong central government, and his guy Hamilton was unshakable on that point.
Jefferson turned on Washington while GW was still president. Jefferson spread rumors about Washington's aptitude and health. He turned to disgraceful tactics to try to defeat him. He was disloyal in spades.
Madison, flip-flopper that he was, jumped off the Federalist bandwagon almost as soon as he'd created the bandwagon himself. He allied with Jefferson, and got all French on us for a while. Madison flipped again as president, owing to practical reality.
Hamilton was GW's guy. He was like a son to him. There was no one he trusted more.
As for the type of government, ALL the Founders except a couple came from the British monarchical system and mercantilism, and to claim they were for "big government," or "centralized government," well, there simply was nothing else in the world at the time. The Dutch had a small Republic that needed constant protection from abroad, and no one cared about Swiss cantons. Compared to Spain, France, and Britain, American government was positively decentralized and democratic/republican in the extreme.
IMHO...civil wars - at least in westernized countries - are fought a bit differently, are they not?
Hamilton and Madison, who as allies spearheaded the movement, clearly wanted more centralized power. Hamilton wanted it all, Madison, the politician, wanted as much as he could reasonably get.
The entire project of the Constitution was not merely to fix the Articles of Confederation. They could have done what they were asked to do and amend it if that were the case.
The goal was to transform the confederacy into a single, mega-republic, with all the instruments of government a small republic would have--the three branches, etc.
That was a radical move at the time--for Americans. We had a Congress of states up until that time. They transformed us into one nation. It was the greatest act of centralization in our history, regardless of what was going on in Spain or England or France.
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