James Polk x 5
George Patton x 5
I too am changing my votes in an attempt to save TJ. (boldface to draw attention to the fact that this is a revision of an earlier vote.)
Tecumseh 3
Philo T. Farnsworth 4
Joshua Chamberlain 3
In response to Bob’s entry, please redact my ballot to read as follows:
Audie Murphy 2
Tecumseh 2
Leonard Bernstein 3
John Brown 3
I doubt the assumption that Khruschev was feeling out a young inexperienced president. If that was the case, then why wasn’t it done in 1961? I might also point out that if JFK had listened to the generals (including a certain Air Force general), none of us would be alive today to tell the story.
Thanks for the way you formatted those posts, Stu.
As a request going forward (nobody needs to revise previous posts), if you are planning on changing your votes, please quote your original voting post so it’s easier for me to see how the votes have changed.
Sorry to dizzy the tabulators so, but in concurrance with Ms. Whatsit:
Audie Murphy 2
Joshua Chamberlin 2
Leonard Bernstein 3
John Brown 3
Given the way things are progressing this morning, I think we need another standings update:
1 Andrew Carnegie 17
2 George S. Patton 17
3 James K. Polk 15
4 Tecumseh 11
5 J.P. Morgan 11
5 Philo T. Farnsworth 11
5 Leonard Bernstein 11
8 Thomas Jefferson 10
8 Audie Murphy 10
8 John Brown 10
8 John Adams 10
Joshua Chamberlain 9
Aaron Copland 5
John Marshall 5
Sitting Bull 5
Langston Hughes 4
Helen Keller 4
Jim Thorpe 4
Jesse Owens 4
Henry Bergh 3
Albert Einstein 2
Jackie Robinson 2
Upton Sinclair 2
Walt Whitman 2
Dwight D. Eisenhower
George Gershwin
Lewis and Clark
James Madison
Edward R. Murrow
Thomas Nast
John J. Pershing
Edgar Allen Poe
Will Rogers
Jonas Salk
John von Neumann
And I will revote:
Andrew Carnegie 2 (-3)
Audie Murphy
John Brown
John Adams
Alexander Hamilton will have to wait for next round for his part in the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Which brings the top of the standings to:
1 George S. Patton 17
2 Andrew Carnegie 14
3 James K. Polk 15
4 Tecumseh 11
4 J.P. Morgan 11
4 Philo T. Farnsworth 11
4 Leonard Bernstein 11
4 Audie Murphy 11
4 John Brown 11
4 John Adams 11
Thomas Jefferson 10
Joshua Chamberlain 9
Aaron Copland 5
John Marshall 5
Sitting Bull 5
Oh, whoops, I missed the request to quote my prior post if changing votes. Will keep this in mind in the future.
Note: above votes were in error; I counted Stus unvotes of adams as a second set of votes. Will modify appropriately in a moment.
So this becomes
Andrew Carnegie 1 (-1)
John Adams 0 (-1)
Joshua Chamberlain 2
And a corrected standings update:
1 George S. Patton 15
1 James K. Polk 15
3 Andrew Carnegie 13
4 Leonard Bernstein 11
4 John Brown 11
4 Joshua Chamberlain 11
4 Philo T. Farnsworth 11
4 J.P. Morgan 11
4 Audie Murphy 11
4 Tecumseh 11
Thomas Jefferson 10
Aaron Copland 5
John Marshall 5
Sitting Bull 5
Langston Hughes 4
Helen Keller 4
Jim Thorpe 4
Jesse Owens 4
Henry Bergh 3
Albert Einstein 2
Jackie Robinson 2
Upton Sinclair 2
Walt Whitman 2
Dwight D. Eisenhower
George Gershwin
Lewis and Clark
James Madison
Edward R. Murrow
Thomas Nast
John J. Pershing
Edgar Allen Poe
Will Rogers
Jonas Salk
John von Neumann
John Adams 0
I personally will not do any more revoting for the rest of the round.
Tom, you are the man.
I actually made the rule up on the fly, seeing how Stu did his post; thanks.
My votes (hope I’m not to late)
Audie Murphy
John Brown (x4)
Aaron Copland
Helen Keller
Thomas Nast
Walt Whitman
Will Rogers
In the spirit of others in this thread, I am going to make a quick plea on behalf of Henry Bergh, who languishes in obscurity not because of his accomplishments (or lack thereof), but probably because he lacked the egotistical zeal for self-promotion that put people like P. T. Barnum, Douglas MacArthur, Walt Disney, and every single president on the list. Does he deserve to be the greatest American? Probably not, but I’d like to see him not get wiped off due to “obscurity.”
Bergh founded the first animal welfare organization in the United States. Admittedly one had been founded considerably earlier in England. We’re not talking a fringe movement to give gorillas voting rights; this was a “don’t beat, maim, and kill animals” society in an age when that was nearly universally common practice and frequent entertainment. His organization worked not just to advocate, but directly with state law enforcement, serving as the model for the commonly-seen modern cooperation in which humane societies run shelters for local governments, an arrangement that has saved a lot of taxpayer money in addition to reducing a lot of suffering.
Whenever I advocate on behalf of animals, someone inevitably makes the argument that I should “think of the children” instead. Well, Bergh neatly anticipated that argument by co-founding the world’s first child-protective agency. The thought that children were not property didn’t begin with Bergh, but he gave it impetus toward becoming official policy. Children were essentially at the mercy of adults in a merciless age until Bergh came along and showed us that we didn’t have to be helplessly outraged individually, we could organize (and petition government) to alleviate the suffering effectively.
Bergh was as instrumental as anyone in developing our modern sensibility that the helpless and small among us, those who cannot speak for themselves, either because they are young or nonhuman, should not be abused or mistreated. Most child- and animal-oriented public agencies and charities owe a part of their philosophical underpinnings to him.
He won no wars and invented no industrial process. What he did do was help in some ways to make America a place we don’t have to be quite so ashamed of; not just the land of the free and the home of the brave, but a safer place for the small and the weak too.
Leonard Bernstein: Composer, conductor, educator
Andrew Carnegie: Industrialist, philanthropist
Aaron Copland: Composer, musician
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Philosopher, writer
Philo Farnsworth: TV piorneer, inventor x2
George Gershwin: Prolific, versatile composer
Alexander Hamilton: Financier, economist, statesman
J.P. Morgan: Financial giant, tycoon
George S. Patton: WWII general, orator
I’m using my votes without particularly aiming them to preserve anybody. Just dinging musicians and tycoons mostly; with a side order of one self-important general and our scapegoat for TV (because Aaron Spelling isn’t on the list, heh). Oh, and Emerson always seemed to be sort of self-promoting.
When asked if “civilized” Westerners were smarter or dumber than hunter-gatherers, Jared Diamond gave a two part answer why he thought hunter-gatherers are, on average, more intelligent than we are. The first part was complex and irrelevant to this topic; the second part of his reasoning that we are stupider was, in its entirety, “because we have television.”
Well this game has gotten skewed by the revotes in my opinion.
Come-on, someone else pony up another vote for Jefferson. He should be cut from the herd of great Americans.
I stand corrected, Curtis.
Sorry, dude. I think that Jefferson, even with his flaws, was one of our greatest thinkers, and while perhaps is not THE greatest American, certainly does not deserve to be cut at this early stage.