Posted on 11/22/2006 7:51:12 AM PST by Borges
1 Abraham Lincoln 2 George Washington 3 Thomas Jefferson 4 Franklin D. Roosevelt 5 Alexander Hamilton 6 Benjamin Franklin 7 John Marshall 8 Martin Luther King Jr. 9 Thomas Edison 10 Woodrow Wilson 11 John D. Rockefeller 12 Ulysses Grant 13 James Madison 14 Henry Ford 15 Theodore Roosevelt 16 Mark Twain 17 Ronald Reagan 18 Andrew Jackson 19 Thomas Paine 20 Andrew Carnegie 21 Harry Truman 22 Walt Whitman 23 Wright Brothers 24 Alexander Graham Bell 25 John Adams 26 Walt Disney 27 Eli Whitney 28 Dwight D. Eisenhower 29 Earl Warren 30 Elizabeth Cady Stanton 31 Henry Clay 32 Albert Einstein 33 Ralph Waldo Emerson 34 Jonas Salk 35 Jackie Robinson 36 William Jennings Bryan 37 J.P. Morgan 38 Susan B. Anthony 39 Rachel Carson 40 John Dewey 41 Harriet Beecher Stowe 42 Eleanor Roosevelt 43 W.E.B. DuBois 44 Lyndon Baines Johnson 45 Samuel F.B. Morse 46 William Lloyd Garrison 47 Frederick Douglass 48 Robert Oppenheimer 49 Frederick Law Olmsted 50 James K. Polk 51 Margaret Sanger 52 Joseph Smith 53 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 54 Bill Gates 55 John Quincy Adams 56 Horace Mann 57 Robert E. Lee 58 John C. Calhoun 59 Louis Sullivan 60 William Faulkner 61 Samuel Gompers 62 William James 63 George Marshall 64 Jane Addams 65 Henry David Thoreau 66 Elvis Presley 67 P.T. Barnum 68 James D. Watson 69 James Gordon Bennett 70 Lewis and Clark 71 Noah Webster 72 Sam Walton 73 Cyrus McCormick 74 Brigham Young 75 George Herman "Babe" Ruth 76 Frank Lloyd Wright 77 Betty Friedan 78 John Brown 79 Louis Armstrong 80 William Randolph Hearst 81 Margaret Mead 82 George Gallup 83 James Fenimore Cooper 84 Thurgood Marshall 85 Ernest Hemingway 86 Mary Baker Eddy 87 Benjamin Spock 88 Enrico Fermi 89 Walter Lippmann 90 Jonathan Edwards 91 Lyman Beecher 92 John Steinbeck 93 Nat Turner 94 George Eastman 95 Sam Goldwyn 96 Ralph Nader 97 Stephen Foster 98 Booker T. Washington 99 Richard Nixon 100 Herman Melville
I note that the father of our Constitution, James Madison, gets number 13, which is pretty good considering how far to the left we've moved as a nation, but that the man who probably did most to degrade its importance in government by moving us to the left, FDR, gets number 5.
Ummmm, did he get his green card and naturalize eventually??
My humble analysis:
It's interesting to see our reactions to this.
1) influence here is on the impact of what the person did. I don't know that I'd put Lincoln behind Washington, because Washington's desire not to set himself up as life-time leader in the traditional way revolutionary leaders have almost always dones is one of the marks that make him special, and set the tone for one of the reasons why America is different.
But Lincoln is important right up there for keeping America as a union.
Lots of people have done things that are noteworthy, but not all of them had a lot of influence. Sanger is on this list not because of her goodness, but because the birth control movement had a huge impact on the American society, and set the stage for the sexual revolution and the decay of the family in a lot of ways. If that's not influence and impact, I don't know what is.
Harriet Beecher Stowe is on the list because Uncle Tom's Cabin was one of the forces that helped crystalize the final break into the Civil War. Big impact.
Sally Ride (who someone mentioned) is not on the list, because, although what she did was noteworthy, and worth honoring, it hasn't had much impact on what's going on in America.
I still think leaving John Adams off is wrong, because he was the firebrand that kept the unrest fermenting in Boston and helped create the climate that allowed the Revolution to even start. Tom Paine's book without John Adams and his bunch of agitators wouldn't have been enough, IMHO.
LBJ did things we're still dealing with. Big impact, lots of it negative.
As much as I admire RE Lee, and I do, I thought perhaps he was a little high, and I am sure Ben Franklin is too low. Not so sure Babe Ruth had that much impact, but then I might be underplaying the impact sports heros have on society.
Jonathan Edwards definitely had a big impact on how Americans felt and behaved about faith matters, and the approach that would be common in religious movements in America for a long time.
Not so sure about Faulkner being on the list, myself, even though I am a distant cousin of his and I love his work...might be misreading his impact on how we thought about writing, how we thought about ourselves mid-century, how we perceived the South?
It's about legacy, all of this: how did the actions and decisions of the people on the list affect how Americans thought, behaved, acted, and came to be where we are today.
It's by no means all going to be positive.
At Philadelphia in 1787 Mason was one of the five most frequent speakers at the Constitutional Convention. He exerted great influence, but during the last 2 weeks of the convention he decided not to sign the document. Mason's refusal prompts some surprise, especially since his name is so closely linked with constitutionalism. He explained his reasons at length, citing the absence of a declaration of rights as his primary concern. He then discussed the provisions of the Constitution point by point, beginning with the House of Representatives. The House he criticized as not truly representative of the nation, the Senate as too powerful. He also claimed that the power of the federal judiciary would destroy the state judiciaries, render justice unattainable, and enable the rich to oppress and ruin the poor. These fears led Mason to conclude that the new government was destined to either become a monarchy or fall into the hands of a corrupt, oppressive aristocracy. From a biography posted here.
Unquestionably, the most important Founding Father nobody knows.
The Gipper at # 17. The Atlantic is populated by people who never met anyone who voted for Ronnie, even after the second landslide.
You're right about that.
I knew someone objected, but I had forgotten it was him! If we hadn't had the bill of rights, things would have definitely been different! Major impact, long forgotten by name.
Absurd.
LOL
Also the Bushes and Gerry Ford, and everyone else with a body temperature approximating 98.6 degrees.
i smell a CAIR law suit. no muslims and no imams on the list.. where is the sense of fairness?
Which of those are now living? Nader? He didn't make my list of influential even though he did kill production of one of the most fun to drive cars ever.
His influence wasn't just musical it was cultural. Akin to the Beatles in the 60s. The same reason Bob Dylan is there.
Presley's 1954 Sun Sessions predate anything Berry did resmebling rock and roll.
But if there'd been no Abraham Lincoln, there'd be no America today either, not as we understand it. And without Washington, we could have emerged as something like Canada.
Well, first of all, that cultural influence was negative and deleterious. Secondly, or rather firstly, its social importance was not that high to begin with, and luckily dissipates. The tunes of Chen ARE wanton.
No fair. Why do Lewis and Clark count as one?
Positive or negative is not the subject of this discussion. The point is the mere presence of influence. And it's as strong as ever.
Frankly I would have considered Marlon Brando as well.
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