I’d like to see George Orwell in Great Debates. Especially during the whole Election 2000 bit. 
I’d settle for Dennis Miller, and he’s not dead!
No question about it, William S. Burroughs. failing that, do you think its’ too late to get ** Hunter Thompson** to sign up?
Well, okay, the Ayn can be neutral. But can you imagine wading through her posts? They’d be long, flowery with tons of big words.
Besides, she’d probably be banned for calling everyone looters outside of the Pit. Ayn’s favorite debate tactic was the ad hominem.
I was bored at work and made a list:
Good:
Pope John XXIII
Audrey Hepburn
Rachel Carson
Plato
Aristotle
Socrates
FDR
Harry Truman-probably be banned because he was a hot head who used to lose his temper too much
Bary Goldwater-not a fan, but the guy was pretty intelligent and besides, anyone who thinks Falwell needs a kick in the ass is all right with me!
Anne Frank
Patrick Pearse
Muhammed-another one to clear things up
Patrick Pearse
Augustine of Hippo (okay, I think the guy was a misogynist, but I didn’t feel like putting him on the neutral list. Besides, maybe he could describe more than he did in his “Confessions”)
Eleanor Roosevelt
Francis of Assisi
Jesse Owen
Bad:
Joseph Mengele
Nero
Caligula
Lizzie Borden
Joseph Goebels
Nathan Bedford Forrest
Eva Braun
Rasputin
Otto von Bismarck
General Custer
J. Edgar Hoover
Judas Iscariot
Lee Harvey Oswald
Aaron Burr
Marquis de Sade-he’d be banned-because he’d purposely troll to piss people off
Cotton Mather
Ivan the Terrible
And neutral, or just plain fun to mess with!
Kaiser Wilhelm II-he’d probably be banned because he was a nut (think of Wildest Bill)
Marie Antoinette
Howard Hughes
General Patton-another one probably be banned
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Nostradamus
Malcolm X
Mary, Queen of Scots
Karl Marx
the “Unsinkable” Molly Brown
Frederick Engels
Sigmund Freud
George III after he went nuts
IMHO, it’s a bit of an overgeneralization to group people into goods and bads and neutrals, so here’s my assorted list:
Churchill
Hitler
Stalin
Mussolini
Pétain
de Gaulle
Franco
(imagine THEM in GD! :))
George B. Shaw
Kublai Khan
Ieyasu
Muhammed
Jesus
Moses
Hammurabi
Chiang Kai-Shek
Ataturk
Aristotle
Julius Cæsar
Diego Rivera
Shaka Zulu
Mao Zedong
Mahatma Gandhi
Simón Bolívar
Benjamin Franklin
Catherine the Great
Eugene V. Debs
Prince Shianouk
Crazy Horse
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Rousseau
Piotr the Great
Plato
Samuel Morse
John Locke
Adam Smith
Isaac Newton
John Calhoun
Robespierre
Christiaan Huygens
Salvador Dalí
The Habsburgs
Voltaire
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Lee Harvey Oswald
etc etc etc
I reckon Joe, Jesus’ dad would be pretty cool. We’d get the straight dope on what Jesus was REALLY like as a kid, (“He wasn’t all that bright y’know, and nobody else would employ him, so I had to find him a job in my OWN workshop” etc) and I’m SURE there’d be some interesting pit threads like “I’ve Been Cuckolded by God, the Bastard”.
Just looking at some of the names listed above: Jesus, the Marquis de Sade, Hitler, Shaka Zulu, and the thought struck me:
Imagine the White Elephant Swaps! They’d be freaking amazing.
I think God would be a cool doper. Ten to one on He’d stay the hell away from Great Debates, and probably hang in MPSIMS a lot. Hopefully He’d sometimes take some of the religious nuts to the Pit. He’d be a blast in GQ too - “Er, God, do you have a cite for that?”
OK, I’ll go along with that. But she’d be hell-on-wheels in the economics threads. Naw, come to think of it, you’re right–she’d be banned within a week.
Don’t know why, but I just got a great mental picture of a GD debate between Rand and Lewis Carrol!
Yes, I’m way too late, but here’s another vote for Jesus. I’m convinced that he would be horrified at the religion that usurped his name. “Jesus Flying Christ!” he’d say. “You’ve all completely missed the point. And I had to couch everything I said in obscure parables! They’d have killed me if I’d said what I really thought!”
I wanna take a stand against inviting God, or Jesus, or any Supreme Being people care to name, to post on SDMB. Why?
- Great Debates would shut down fast. You gonna debate God?
- DITTO Humble Opinions. Though, would God abstain here? How could God’s opinions be humble?
- God doesn’t need an invitation, and probably doesn’t even need to register.
- God would not (could not?) respect our anonymity. There might be real world consequences to our posts. There might be afterlife consequences. I don’t need the presssure.
Holy cats, yojimboguy–I hadn’t thought of any of that! And what if he started correcting all of Cecil’s columns? Talk about a crisis of faith!
Yeah, I could imagine him being called into The Pit—a lot. Mostly for immature attention getting threads and posts. “Look at MEEEE! I’M IMPORTANT!” Then he would get a reply like, “Sigh. When does school start again?” 
Forgot to mention a few other things about ol’ Caligula and the Caesars:
I would also imagine that Caligula would not follow grammer or spelling rules, and he’d get called on that, too. No doubt he would also be a hacker and he would be BANNED within a few days of him joining. As for the other Caesars, I would imagine Julius and Augustus as popular posters, and Tiberius would be well thought of because of his cynical rantings in The Pit (I so see Tiberius as a Pit person…just creating threads, not being called into it like Caligula would be). Claudius, I would see as someone who was a normal poster; one with not too many posts but is generally liked anyway. Nero would sort of be like Caligula, only not so obnoxious. Nero would be called in The Pit once or twice, but then he would be under control for a while. I don’t think Nero would ever really be BANNED, but I do see him with a lot of rolly-eyed replies. "There goes Nero again… :rolleyes: "
So…all we get to do is exchange posts? Can’t I have an affair with him? Huh, please?
Petrarch
Galileo
de Talleyrand (who would always manage to smooth his way through a heated debate, and would never get sent to the Pit)
Pythagoras (who would win one of the Loony of the Month awards for his odd animist beliefs)
Robert Hooke
Christine de Pizan
Oh man, I can just see Mark Twain just totally tearing everyone to shreds in the Pit. He wouldn’t even have to swear to make a total ass out of anyone!
I think Jesus would be cool at Dopefests-you wouldn’t even have to bring the booze.
Nelson Mandela
Maggie Thatcher
Gen. Ridgeway (sucessor to MacArthur in the Korean War)
plus Truman and Feynman and…
Feynman, of course. I’ll…er, what is it now…“seventh” that?
Anthony Burgess would be great in the language threads, among other things.
Sir Richard Francis Burton would be a great contributor. He’d certainly give Collounsbury a run for his money in Middle East debates!
And, oh, Aaron Burr, just because I seem to be nominating guys whose last name starts with “Bur”.
Siddartha Gautama. His only form of participation would be to seek out blatherers and whack them upside the head with a special “frying pan” icon.
Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Gaius Marius
Marie Antoinette
Elizabeth I, of England
Elzebet Bathory
Vlad Tepes
Torquemada
Tanaquil
Catherine de Medici
Christine de Pizan
Artemisia Gentileschi
Anna Comnena
Zoe Paleologue
Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus Pius
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus
Alexander, Tsar-Liberator
Tsarevna Xenia Godunov
Tsaritsa Natalia Naryshkin