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=> GENERAL DISCUSSION => Topic started by: HoyaSaxa03 on November 27, 2006, 06:25:00 pm
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from this month's Atlantic Monthly
i think the inclusion of two Mormons on here is a bit bizarre, but other than that it seems pretty solid (and unadventurous, i guess)
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200612/influentials (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200612/influentials) (need a subscription)
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1 Abraham Lincoln
He saved the Union, freed the slaves, and presided over America??s second founding.
2 George Washington
He made the United States possible??not only by defeating a king, but by declining to become one himself.
3 Thomas Jefferson
The author of the five most important words in American history: ??All men are created equal.?
4 Franklin Delano Roosevelt
He said, ??The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,? and then he proved it.
5 Alexander Hamilton
Soldier, banker, and political scientist, he set in motion an agrarian nation??s transformation into an industrial power.
6 Benjamin Franklin
The Founder-of-all-trades?? scientist, printer, writer, diplomat, inventor, and more; like his country, he contained multitudes.
7 John Marshall
The defining chief justice, he established the Supreme Court as the equal of the other two federal branches.
8 Martin Luther King Jr.
His dream of racial equality is still elusive, but no one did more to make it real.
9 Thomas Edison
It wasn??t just the lightbulb; the Wizard of Menlo Park was the most prolific inventor in American history.
10 Woodrow Wilson
He made the world safe for U.S. interventionism, if not for democracy.
11 John D. Rockefeller
The man behind Standard Oil set the mold for our tycoons??first by making money, then by giving it away.
12 Ulysses S. Grant
He was a poor president, but he was the general Lincoln needed; he also wrote the greatest political memoir in American history.
13 James Madison
He fathered the Constitution and wrote the Bill of Rights.
14 Henry Ford
He gave us the assembly line and the Model T, and sparked America??s love affair with the automobile.
15 Theodore Roosevelt
Whether busting trusts or building canals, he embodied the ??strenuous life? and blazed a trail for twentieth-century America.
16 Mark Twain
Author of our national epic, he was the most unsentimental observer of our national life.
17 Ronald Reagan
The amiable architect of both the conservative realignment and the Cold War??s end.
18 Andrew Jackson
The first great populist: he found America a republic and left it a democracy.
19 Thomas Paine
The voice of the American Revolution, and our first great radical.
20 Andrew Carnegie
The original self-made man forged America??s industrial might and became one of the nation??s greatest philanthropists.
21 Harry Truman
An accidental president, this machine politician ushered in the Atomic Age and then the Cold War.
22 Walt Whitman
He sang of America and shaped the country??s conception of itself.
23 Wright Brothers
They got us all off the ground.
24 Alexander Graham Bell
By inventing the telephone, he opened the age of telecommunications and shrank the world.
25 John Adams
His leadership made the American Revolution possible; his devotion to republicanism made it succeed.
26 Walt Disney
The quintessential entertainer-entrepreneur, he wielded unmatched influence over our childhood.
27 Eli Whitney
His gin made cotton king and sustained an empire for slavery.
28 Dwight Eisenhower
He won a war and two elections, and made everybody like Ike.
29 Earl Warren
His Supreme Court transformed American society and bequeathed to us the culture wars.
30 Elizabeth Cady Stanton
One of the first great American feminists, she fought for social reform and women??s right to vote.
31 Henry Clay
One of America??s greatest legislators and orators, he forged compromises that held off civil war for decades.
32 Albert Einstein
His greatest scientific work was done in Europe, but his humanity earned him undying fame in America.
33 Ralph Waldo Emerson
The bard of individualism, he relied on himself??and told us all to do the same.
34 Jonas Salk
His vaccine for polio eradicated one of the world??s worst plagues.
35 Jackie Robinson
He broke baseball??s color barrier and embodied integration??s promise.
36 William Jennings Bryan
??The Great Commoner? lost three presidential elections, but his populism transformed the country.
37 J. P. Morgan
The great financier and banker was the prototype for all the Wall Street barons who followed.
38 Susan B. Anthony
She was the country??s most eloquent voice for women??s equality under the law.
39 Rachel Carson
The author of Silent Spring was godmother to the environmental movement.
40 John Dewey
He sought to make the public school a training ground for democratic life.
41 Harriet Beecher Stowe
Her Uncle Tom??s Cabin inspired a generation of abolitionists and set the stage for civil war.
42 Eleanor Roosevelt
She used the first lady??s office and the mass media to become ??first lady of the world.?
43 W. E. B. DuBois
One of America??s great intellectuals, he made the ??problem of the color line? his life??s work.
44 Lyndon Baines Johnson
His brilliance gave us civil-rights laws; his stubbornness gave us Vietnam.
45 Samuel F. B. Morse
Before the Internet, there was Morse code.
46 William Lloyd Garrison
Through his newspaper, The Liberator, he became the voice of abolition.
47 Frederick Douglass
After escaping from slavery, he pricked the nation??s conscience with an eloquent accounting of its crimes.
48 Robert Oppenheimer
The father of the atomic bomb and the regretful midwife of the nuclear era.
49 Frederick Law Olmsted
The genius behind New York??s Central Park, he inspired the greening of America??s cities.
50 James K. Polk
This one-term president??s Mexican War landgrab gave us California, Texas, and the Southwest.
51 Margaret Sanger
The ardent champion of birth control??and of the sexual freedom that came with it.
52 Joseph Smith
The founder of Mormonism, America??s most famous homegrown faith.
53 Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Known as ??The Great Dissenter,? he wrote Supreme Court opinions that continue to shape American jurisprudence.
54 Bill Gates
The Rockefeller of the Information Age, in business and philanthropy alike.
55 John Quincy Adams
The Monroe Doctrine??s real author, he set nineteenth-century America??s diplomatic course.
56 Horace Mann
His tireless advocacy of universal public schooling earned him the title ??The Father of American Education.?
57 Robert E. Lee
He was a good general but a better symbol, embodying conciliation in defeat.
58 John C. Calhoun
The voice of the antebellum South, he was slavery??s most ardent defender.
59 Louis Sullivan
The father of architectural modernism, he shaped the defining American building: the skyscraper.
60 William Faulkner
The most gifted chronicler of America??s tormented and fascinating South.
61 Samuel Gompers
The country??s greatest labor organizer, he made the golden age of unions possible.
62 William James
The mind behind Pragmatism, America??s most important philosophical school.
63 George Marshall
As a general, he organized the American effort in World War II; as a statesman, he rebuilt Western Europe.
64 Jane Addams
The founder of Hull House, she became the secular saint of social work.
65 Henry David Thoreau
The original American dropout, he has inspired seekers of authenticity for 150 years.
66 Elvis Presley
The king of rock and roll. Enough said.
67 P. T. Barnum
The circus impresario??s taste for spectacle paved the way for blockbuster movies and reality TV.
68 James D. Watson
He codiscovered DNA??s double helix, revealing the code of life to scientists and entrepreneurs alike.
69 James Gordon Bennett
As the founding publisher of The New York Herald, he invented the modern American newspaper.
70 Lewis and Clark
They went west to explore, and millions followed in their wake.
71 Noah Webster
He didn??t create American English, but his dictionary defined it.
72 Sam Walton
He promised us ??Every Day Low Prices,? and we took him up on the offer.
73 Cyrus McCormick
His mechanical reaper spelled the end of traditional farming, and the beginning of industrial agriculture.
74 Brigham Young
What Joseph Smith founded, Young preserved, leading the Mormons to their promised land.
75 George Herman ??Babe? Ruth
He saved the national pastime in the wake of the Black Sox scandal??and permanently linked sports and celebrity.
76 Frank Lloyd Wright
America??s most significant architect, he was the archetype of the visionary artist at odds with capitalism.
77 Betty Friedan
She spoke to the discontent of housewives everywhere??and inspired a revolution in gender roles.
78 John Brown
Whether a hero, a fanatic, or both, he provided the spark for the Civil War.
79 Louis Armstrong
His talent and charisma took jazz from the cathouses of Storyville to Broadway, television, and beyond.
80 William Randolph Hearst
The press baron who perfected yellow journalism and helped start the Spanish-American War.
81 Margaret Mead
With Coming of Age in Samoa, she made anthropology relevant??and controversial.
82 George Gallup
He asked Americans what they thought, and the politicians listened.
83 James Fenimore Cooper
The novels are unreadable, but he was the first great mythologizer of the frontier.
84 Thurgood Marshall
As a lawyer and a Supreme Court justice, he was the legal architect of the civil-rights revolution.
85 Ernest Hemingway
His spare style defined American modernism, and his life made machismo a cliché.
86 Mary Baker Eddy
She got off her sickbed and founded Christian Science, which promised spiritual healing to all.
87 Benjamin Spock
With a single book??and a singular approach??he changed American parenting.
88 Enrico Fermi
A giant of physics, he helped develop quantum theory and was instrumental in building the atomic bomb.
89 Walter Lippmann
The last man who could swing an election with a newspaper column.
90 Jonathan Edwards
Forget the fire and brimstone: his subtle eloquence made him the country??s most influential theologian.
91 Lyman Beecher
Harriet Beecher Stowe??s clergyman father earned fame as an abolitionist and an evangelist.
92 John Steinbeck
As the creator of Tom Joad, he chronicled Depression-era misery.
93 Nat Turner
He was the most successful rebel slave; his specter would stalk the white South for a century.
94 George Eastman
The founder of Kodak democratized photography with his handy rolls of film.
95 Sam Goldwyn
A producer for forty years, he was the first great Hollywood mogul.
96 Ralph Nader
He made the cars we drive safer; thirty years later, he made George W. Bush the president.
97 Stephen Foster
America??s first great songwriter, he brought us ??O! Susanna? and ??My Old Kentucky Home.?
98 Booker T. Washington
As an educator and a champion of self-help, he tried to lead black America up from slavery.
99 Richard Nixon
He broke the New Deal majority, and then broke his presidency on a scandal that still haunts America.
100 Herman Melville
Moby Dick was a flop at the time, but Melville is remembered as the American Shakespeare.
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ahem........#24
I hardly think being Scottish makes you an influential American.
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no ggw?? I demand a recount!!
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Margaret Sanger...she was also a proponent of eugenics. That part usually gets left off when people talk about her and the pill, but part of the reason behind it was to limit the number of "coloreds."
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Originally posted by HoyaSaxa08:
29 Earl Warren
His Supreme Court transformed American society and bequeathed to us the culture wars.
"We already had a female Chief Justice and his name was Earl Warren." Hank Hill
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Originally posted by poorlulu:
ahem........#24
I hardly think being Scottish makes you an influential American.
i thought the same thing, canadians are quick to claim Bell, but yea olde wikipedia sez:
Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 ?? August 2, 1922) was a Scottish scientist and inventor who emigrated to Canada. Today, Bell is widely considered as one of the foremost developers of the telephone, together with Antonio Meucci, inventor of the first telephone prototype, and Philipp Reis. Six years after having obtained his telephone patent he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In addition to Bell's work in telecommunications technology, he was responsible for important advances in aviation and hydrofoil technology.
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Very innarestin list. I would make a strong case for John Hammond, who flew in the face of a Vanderbilt, silver-spoon life of Exeter-Yale-Law School-Fortune 500 boardroom for nights in Harlem speakeasys. In the process, the bankrolled the discovery/first recordings of a few musicians that made a small impact on this-a-hear country: Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Ray Vaughn--- as well as some of the first mixed race jazz bands ever assembled.
Re: Faulkner --- his portrayal in 'Barton Fink' is hard to shake.
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Originally posted by brennser:
no ggw?? I demand a recount!!
They said I was #106, wedged between William Shatner and Salmon P. Chase.
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I find it humorous that all these years later, in a list of individuals, Lewis still can't get his ass unhitched from Clark's. At least the Wright brothers were related.
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Originally posted by HoyaSaxa08:
17 Ronald Reagan
The amiable architect of both the conservative realignment and the Cold War??s end.
99 Richard Nixon
He broke the New Deal majority, and then broke his presidency on a scandal that still haunts America.
Only in the Atlantic Monthly....
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Originally posted by vansmack:
Originally posted by HoyaSaxa08:
17 Ronald Reagan
The amiable architect of both the conservative realignment and the Cold War??s end.
99 Richard Nixon
He broke the New Deal majority, and then broke his presidency on a scandal that still haunts America.
Only in the Atlantic Monthly.... [/b]
That makes me nauseous, not only because of Nixon, but because of the fact that people still credit Reagan for ending the Cold War.
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Is this list only influential in a positive way? Because I would make the case for LBJ--his Vietnam war helped shape American foreign policy to this day.
Also, how about someone like George Orwell? He changed the face of moviemaking as much as Elvis Presley changed music.
And Einstein is definitely not American.
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Unless you're talking about another George Orwell, he's not an American. Perhaps you mean Orson Welles? :p Einstein became a U.S. citizen in 1940.
Originally posted by thingsfallapart:
Also, how about someone like George Orwell? He changed the face of moviemaking as much as Elvis Presley changed music.
And Einstein is definitely not American.
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Originally posted by thingsfallapart:
And Einstein is definitely not American.
he most definitely was, just not by birth. einstein was an immigrant who obtained full US citizenship. zie wiki sez: "On October 1, 1940, Einstein became an American citizen. He remained both an American and a Swiss citizen until his death on April 18, 1955."
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While Ronnie was a damn good president, he did NOT bring about the end of the cold war. He was merely in place when it happened. The REAL credit for ending the cold war goes back to the Nixon white house when he started the whole process rolling along. The stupidity of watergate aside, RMN did a lot more for this country than damn near any other president ever did. In many people's opinions (mine incldued) he was a far greater president than even the hallowed (and somewhat over rated) RR.
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That list is top heavy with female & minority PC picks and weak on frontiersmen, explorers & conquering heroes. All top influential Americans of historical personage were born in the USA.
Where R:
Stephen Decatur
Francis Scott Key
Daniel Boone
Davy Crockett
Sam Houston
Edgar Allan Poe
Wyatt Earp & Doc Holliday
George Armstrong Custer
Kit Carson
Geronimo
Douglas MacArthur
Billy Mitchell
Neil Armstrong
Charles Lindbergh
George S. Patton
Billy The Kid
Bonnie & Clyde
Sitting Bull
Frederic Remington
Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
Eddie Rickenbacker
Norman Rockwell
Clarence Darrow
Sam Colt
John Browning
Jesse Owens
Eugene Stoner
Kelly Johnson
Andrew Wyeth
Audie Murphy
Chuck Yeager
J.Edgar Hoover
JFK
???
These should not belong near the top:
John Marshall
Martin Luther King Jr.
Woodrow Wilson
Ronald Reagan
Andrew Carnegie
Harry Truman
Walt Whitman
Wright Brothers
Alexander Graham Bell
Dwight Eisenhower
Earl Warren
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Henry Clay
Albert Einstein
Jackie Robinson
William Jennings Bryan
J. P. Morgan
Susan B. Anthony
Rachel Carson
John Dewey
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Eleanor Roosevelt
W. E. B. DuBois
Lyndon Baines Johnson
William Lloyd Garrison
Frederick Law Olmsted
Margaret Sanger
Joseph Smith
Bill Gates
Horace Mann
John C. Calhoun
Louis Sullivan
William Faulkner
Samuel Gompers
William James
Jane Addams
James Gordon Bennett
Sam Walton
Brigham Young
George Herman ??Babe? Ruth
Betty Friedan
Louis Armstrong
Margaret Mead
George Gallup
Thurgood Marshall
Benjamin Spock
Mary Baker Eddy
Ernest Hemingway
Walter Lippmann
Jonathan Edwards
Lyman Beecher
John Steinbeck
Nat Turner
Ralph Nader
Richard Nixon
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What about the arts? Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol.
How about Sojourner Truth, John Brown, Bela Abzug...
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Actually, the credit for ending the Cold War goes to the Soviets. By adhering to the principles of Marx and Lenin, they ensured that their system would eventually collapse.
I can't believe how many otherwise intelligent people pander to the mythmaking efforts the Conservos have built about Reagan...
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Originally posted by pela123:
What about the arts? Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol.
How about Sojourner Truth, John Brown, Bela Abzug...
You have got to be kidding? Some of these would be lucky to get in the Top Ten Thousand.
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John J. Pershing
Admiral Robert Peary
Bob Hope
Lucille Ball
Ray Bradbury
Jimmy Carter
DWG's just aren't pop with the PC crowd.
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101 Seth Hurwitz
His 9:30 Club made DC cool, was the preminent place to see live music during the rise of "college" and alternative rock, transformed into the class music club, defined a nation, and enriched the world about half as much as James K. Polk.
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Originally posted by Random Citizen PDX:
[QB] Unless you're talking about another George Orwell, he's not an American. Perhaps you mean Orson Welles? :p
Indeed you're right. My mistake.
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Just adding some that should have been on the list--Some of my suggestions certainly were equally if not more influential than some on the actual list--it just shows who society and history choose to value and celebrate
Originally posted by Surly Bonds:
Originally posted by pela123:
What about the arts? Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol.
How about Sojourner Truth, John Brown, Bela Abzug...
You have got to be kidding? Some of these would be lucky to get in the Top Ten Thousand. [/b]
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Originally posted by thingsfallapart:
Originally posted by Random Citizen PDX:
[QB] Unless you're talking about another George Orwell, he's not an American. Perhaps you mean Orson Welles? :p
Indeed you're right. My mistake. [/b]
What's really Orwellian is how the history of Oceania has been rewritten by Thought Police from Minitruth. Great founders of the land(Washington) have been erased and replaced with communists(MLKJ).
But then again, I suppose it's a good idea after all, as long as it get's us closer to eradicating the enemy of the peeps, the dreaded Emmanuel Goldstein. We all hate him!
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How about:
Carrot Top
Robert Pollard
the Hamburglar
Tyrell Owens
Weird Al Yankovic
Jerry Brown
Tawana Brawley
Bert and Ernie
Gabe Kaplan
Dee Snider
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<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/ba/LeeIacocca.jpg" alt=" - " />
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Originally posted by They call me Doctor Doom.:
Actually, the credit for ending the Cold War goes to the Soviets. By adhering to the principles of Marx and Lenin, they ensured that their system would eventually collapse.
I can't believe how many otherwise intelligent people pander to the mythmaking efforts the Conservos have built about Reagan...
But would the Soviets actually have collapsed and when would it happen? China is still following the Communist line and they're probably the biggest comer of this century.
I am the last person to defend Reagan, and I also don't understand his deification among conservatives. But there is a legitimate school of thought that says by investing so heavily in defense, especially the Star Wars system, Reagan triggered the Soviets' collapse because they went broke trying to keep up.
That said, there's a Doonsbury strip that has James Baker explaining that exact theory to Reagan, who then asks "Am I really that smart?" (To which, Baker says, "Well sir, we're still trying to find out.") So whether it was intentional or just a by-product of a heavy defense mindset, it did play a big role in the SU falling apart.
I don't think Nixon played a huge role in bring down the Soviet Union. He certainly considered Breshnev an adversary, but no more than Kennedy or Johnson did (and both of these guys had serious run-ins with the USSR, with the Bay of Pigs, Cuban missiles and Vietnam). Nixon had a rep for being anti-communist, but that was based more on his career in Congress and when he was VP.
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The USA is the new Soviet Union.
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If country of birth were the issue, then all the founding fathers shouldn't be on the list. I guess if you get them naturalized, they are yours.
I think the Morman ones are deserved as they have a huge influence on America. Just not much around here.
I think there should be someone like Chuck Berry on there too, some black artist who crossed the music lines early on.
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Originally posted by pela123:
How about John Brown...
did you even read the list???
78 John Brown
Whether a hero, a fanatic, or both, he provided the spark for the Civil War.
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Whoops--skimmed through too fast
Originally posted by Venerable Bede:
Originally posted by pela123:
How about John Brown...
did you even read the list???
78 John Brown
Whether a hero, a fanatic, or both, he provided the spark for the Civil War. [/b]
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didn't see Walter Cronkite mentioned anywhere. His reporting on the Vietnam war and the upheaval of our nation at the time changed the scope of journalistic reporting.
And what about Edward R. Murrow, whose stance during the red scare set the standard for independent reporting, among other things.
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Originally posted by Surly Bonds:
The USA is the new Soviet Union.
Ya got that right, commrad!
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Originally posted by Jaguar:
Originally posted by Surly Bonds:
The USA is the new Soviet Union.
Ya got that right, commrad! [/b]
It's called 'convergence'. Russia got more capitalist (robber barons, & Johnson County War circa 1892), and we got more communist (hidden cameras everywhere -all phones bugged, spies hiding behind your sofa).
Pretty soon we will meet in the middle.