Posted on 11/22/2006 7:51:12 AM PST by Borges
The thing I love about this list is they rank some of the people I most admire as more influential than I would have if I had been asked to make my own list (Hamilton, John Marshall, Ronald Reagan, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth).
LMFAO
But they were both responsible. Monroe after all made the decision to follow the view of JQ Adams against the rest of his cabinet and the preliminary advice of his two mentors - Madison and Jefferson. And it isn't like the Monroe Doctrine was the only thing Monroe did. He should be on the list.
I'd agree. That's why Hamilton rates so high in this list. We can admit that he was a major influence on what we've become without feeling guilty or angry or resentful about it as so many Americans once did.
But there's a time lag involved. The people who make up lists like this learned their history up to 20 years ago from people who learned their history 20 years before that from those who did their learning 20 years before that. So high rankings for Bryan and Wilson are a holdover from the 60s and 70s -- indeed, from the 30s and 40s.
John Dewey counts as a figure who combined influence on education, philosophy, and politics. In any one field you can argue that his importance has been exaggerated, but put them altogether and you can see that he did have an effect. As his influence fades we may be able to see that Charles W. Eliot or James Conant had more influence on American education than Dewey himself did.
Charles W. Eliot or James Conantor, dare say we... Nicholas Murray Butler ...lol!
Your points on Dewey are well taken, as for Hamilton.
LOSER Lincoln would also get my vote for #1! However, his sorry little self stands in the NEGATIVE column...
Ike did two other things that should pull him up. He made it OK in the South to vote for a Republican. Millions followed him to war, so they could vote for him. Also look up Project Corona.
Polk, JQ Adams, LBJ, Monroe, Nixon, Daniel Webster, Seward, Salmon P. Chase, William McKinley (who after all beat Bryan twice and put together the coalition that actually did dominate politics for 36 years). Those are the ones I am pretty confident about. But I think an argument could also be made for:
Grover Cleveland, JFK, Martin Van Buren, Fremont, John Jay, Albert Gallatin, the current and previous two Presidents, Fremont, Patrick Henry and some other revolutionary period figures, and finally any of the 20th century Presidents I didn't already mention who were not listed above #36.
I am not denying Bryan had lots of influence. I just don't think he had enough to be at 36, and I probably wouldn't have included him at all.
Bryant was bascially the architect of 20th century liberal economic policy wasn't he? He was also a staunch bigot.
If they'd made such a list in the 1930s or in the 1960s, Bryan would probably rank well. You could make the case that the New Deal and the Great Society of Johnson and Humphrey go back to roots in Bryan. Lately, though that doesn't seem to be the strongest American political tradition, so Bryan's influence is bound to be reckoned as less. Moreover, Bryan's world of prairie populism agrarian radicalism doesn't seem to have survived. It was a different story when the Democrats still drew strength from the Plains States and the rural South.
He was also a staunch bigot.
How so? "Bigot" is an ambiguous word. Are you using it to mean "racist"? Was Bryan more racist or ethnocentric than anyone else in his America? Wasn't that the way of his times? Or are you using it to refer to narrow-minded religiosity? You might have a better case here, but I still wonder. Is everyone who believes in religious dogmas and sacred texts then a bigot?
Sorry, crusher, the above post was for crasher and Borges.
In a list like this, they basically try to get someone to "represent" every part of American life. So you'll have some scientists, architects, athletes, social reformers, activists, artists, entertainers, religious leaders, and so forth, who may not have been all that influential, but who hold up their branch of national life. Also, some things that were very much alive at one part of our national history that shaped who we were, aren't necessarily that important today, but they're "representatives" on the list anyway.
For example, James Fenimore Cooper and Walter Lippmann probably aren't so significant over the long sweep of our history, but they wanted a pioneering novelist and an early columnist to round out the list. "Babe" Ruth as well, isn't anywhere near as important a figure as he was just a few decades ago. Similarly, Dr. Spock survives as a typical postwar figure and a possible explanation for the uproar of the 1960s, not as a live influence.
Was Mary Baker Eddy really so significant? For that matter, is Margaret Sanger on the list as anything but an ad for Planned Parenthood? And does the bomb merit Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Fermi? Anyway, the Atlantic has got people talking about their list, and that's what they wanted.
An absolute travesty! It was he, not Marconi, that invented the radio. Marconi was then awarded the patent and the Noble prize for "his" invention. What a F*@!%$# disgrace. There is also the Tesla coil. Tesla transformed civilization. His greatness is the one thing that the Serbs and the Croats actually agree upon!
John Browning the legendary firearms inventor should also be on the list.
If she was anywhere in that list,their would be no way in hell the list would even be taken seriously.She would make it in the "America's most useless list"though and would easily rank up there in the top 2.
Einstien has to be there. He's almost universally regarded as the century's greatest scientist.
Bryant was a White Supremacist. At least by today's standards.
By today's standards pretty much every politician in the 19th and early 20th centuries was a White Supremacist.
Throw out Bryan for that, and you'd have to do the same to most of your list.
So far as I know, we don't know Bryan's convictions in the matter, though. He accepted those of his party.
There are some seriously evil people on that list.
"seriously evil people" can still be influential........just look at Hitler, Stalin and Mao..........
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