Who are the worst people in American history?
Right Wing News reports:
"Out of all the gangsters, serial killers, mass murderers, incompetent & crooked politicians, spies, traitors, and ultra left-wing kooks in all of American history -- have you ever wondered who the worst of the worst was? Well, we here at RWN wondered about that, too, and that's why we decided to email more than a hundred bloggers to get their opinions..."
Landover Baptist Church was not invited to participate, though they are commenting:
American History is a larger-than-life epic, complete with genocide, slavery, civil war, lynch mobs and terrorists, literal witch-hunts, and massive crimes. We have been the headquarters for organized crime empires, the birthplace of Liberian dictators, a place of refuge for nazis and other immigrants with shady pasts (and if the foreign-born Obama can be on the list, so can Nazi concentration camp guards who gained American citizenship).
Lots of bad guys to choose from. So you can imagine that conservatives would use the full depth and breadth of their knowledge and moral compasses to...
Oh, who am I kidding? Here's the list (I've added wikipedia links for the less famous folks):
- Saul Alinsky (7)
- Bill Clinton (7)
- Hillary Clinton (7)
- Michael Moore (7)
- George Soros (8)
- Alger Hiss (8)
- Al Sharpton (8)
- Al Gore (9)
- Noam Chomsky (9)
- Richard Nixon (9)
- Jane Fonda (9)
- Harry Reid (9)
- Nancy Pelosi (9)
- John Wilkes Booth (10)
- Margaret Sanger (10)
- Aldrich Ames (11)
- Timothy McVeigh (11)
- Ted Kennedy (14)
- Lyndon Johnson (14)
- Benedict Arnold (17)
- Woodrow Wilson (17)
- The Rosenbergs (19)
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt (21)
- Barack Obama (23)
- Jimmy Carter (25)
Now, to be fair, "the Rosenbergs" (technically two people, but in republicanland women are absorbed by their husbands at the moment of marriage) weren't up to any good. I imagine Aldrich Ames wouldn't be on the list if he'd betrayed Julia Plame, but he didn't. Woodrow Wilson got us into WW1, though I'm not sure if that's why he's on the list. Benedict Arnold, well, congratulations on remembering your elementary school history. Props to them for not brushing Timothy McVeigh and J.W. Booth under the rug, though I didn't think Buns Of Steel was THAT bad...
But seriously, easy as it is to laugh at the shallow, petty, self-centered, and utterly ignorant mess that is what remains of conservatism....It is meaningless without contrast. I want to use this moment to ask everyone here: who are the worst people in American history?
Please also add WHY, since many people do both good and bad things - Nixon is an example.
Also, I'd like to point out the difference between evil and wickedness. Evil is done by people who, though bad information, bad logic, or sheer emotion, believe their actions are good or at least harmless. Wickedness is evil inflicted just for the fun of it. Most villains in fiction are wicked, but other than a few psycho killers, they aren't so common in reality. So instead of "worst people" this list might be better called "the people who did the worst things".
However, if you really want bad things to happen, you have to organize people into groups. Not only is it more efficient, it's also anonymous - making the evildoer immune to "worst people" lists. This is a major problem with this exercise, and a telling difference between the left and right. Liberals protest organizations and policies, while the right-wing protests people. Thus we see left-wing radicals breaking McDonald's windows, and right-wing radicals shooting people. The left may form mobs, but only the right forms lynch mobs.
So, let's try to make two lists: The Worst People in American History, and the Worst Organizations in American History.
I've been talking enough. Let's hear your two cents!