I’ve always thought well off Lee and don’t think he qualifies as the worst American. But still, the way you make this argument I take issue with in a big way. Using the same logic, the racists who bombed the 16th Street Church in Birmingham in 1963, killing four young girls, were great Americans because they thought they were doing what was right. They undoubtedly thought they were striking a blow for states’ rights as well.
They weren’t great Americans, they were terrorists.
You know, the more I think about it, the more your argument convinces me that Lee was a bad guy after all.
How about Charles Lindbergh? He thought Hitler was a great man, he was a fascist and a racist bastard.
Huey Long. He was an advocate for the people, and accomplished plenty of good…but he did so by being a bullying dictator and violating the Constitution.
I thought of him, but since it was such a bizarre isolated incident rather than long-lasting one I didn’t go with him. (The Powers Booth movie version gave me nightmares for years, incidentally.)
Can you believe that Congressman Ryan’s daughter joined a cult after that? Sad but true.
From what I recall, I don’t think chose the Generalship in the south to fight specifically for “states rights” as much as he chose to fight to protect his homeland – Virginia – at a time when many people still felt stronger ties to their home state than to the union as a whole. Especially if your home state was one of the original colonies. They were individual colonies before they were a “union”.
If I remember correctly, Lee also specifically refused to lead armies in the other campaign areas in the south. Most of his battles were defenses, when northern generals attacked territory in Virginia. Except for 2 major ones (I think it was 2), when he lead southern armies across the border.
Kidding, kidding!
I reckon whomever was responsible for enacting those Jim Crow laws in the United States caused a large amount of unnecessary human suffering, so I’d like to nominate him, whoever he was (I’m sure someone will be along to tell me).
Also Donald Rumsfeld. He’d be fine if he was the manager of a sports team or something, but as U.S. Secretary of Defense he seems to be blundering about in the darkness, which has and probably will lead to a large amount of unnecessary human suffering.
Causing unnecessary human suffering is I think what makes someone a rotten human being.
Leviosaurus, the difference between the two is that Lee did… How can I put this? He did everything openly. It was a matter… and Monstre is correct, it was because he considered Virginia his homeland… about which reasonable men could differ. Hard to understand now, but true. The difference between the two is the difference between a soldier and a terrorist, and it’s hard to define the difference, but it is there.
He was a bad “Citizen of the United States”, but in my mind, a great American is someone who is willing to follow his conscience wherever it leads him. Even if it disagrees with conventional wisdom. I honestly can’t find a contemporary of his who had a bad thing to say about him, on a personal or professional level. And I mean that to be his fellow soldiers. Even opposing him, they respected him in ways most Union Generals never were.
Course, I’m a bit of a contrarian by nature. But calling a honorable, good, just, fair, and tolerant man who differed on a issue reasonable men could differ on, then did his best to do what he could in defense of it, a Worst American, strikes me as something wrong. I may not agree with his side of the issue, but he is no evil man.
Now, a man who wants to have a military coup because he doesn’t like the next president in office, a man who wants to fake terrorist actions on American citizens to start a war, a man like General Lemnitzer? That’s a Worst American.
Isn’t it as equally reprehensible to ask a good general, but a bad man, to lead your army?
“Well, General Lee, you’re really a shitty guy - with the slaves and all that business, but we’re completely willing to overlook all that if you’ll just lead our army.”
So, if you’re going to defend Lee, why rag on Davis? If secession was right and proper, and Lee was heroic for fighting for it, why wasn’t Davis?
I read your earlier post talking about how you fault Davis for continuing the war even when it was obvious the CSA couldn’t win, and saying that he could have made a negotiated piece sometime in or before 1863, except:
It wasn’t, in 1863, obvious that the Confederacy couldn’t win. It was outnumbered and outsupplied, but it was holding, and still hoping for British and French recognition. As late as 1864, Lincoln was concerned he wouldn’t win reelection because of the war, and that the Democrats would allow the CSA independence.
There’s no way that Lincoln would agree to a negotiated settlement that would have allowed the CSA to stay free, and, starting in 1863, it’s not likely that the southern states, even with a peace, could have kept their slaves (The Emancipation Proclamation took effect Jan. 1, 1863, and the earlier Confiscation Acts in 1862). Any peace commission could have negotiated a lenient peace from Lincoln, but restoration of the Union and abolition weren’t negotiatable from the Union side.
I was wondering when you were going to get around to that one.
I accept both Lee and Davis as Americans. Both were born and died in what is now the USA. My purpose in stating that Lee was not an American due to his citizenship in the Confederacy was not to exclude him from this thread but to defend him against the charge of treason, nothing else.
Whether Davis was a traitor or not I can’t answer- I don’t have enough of a grounding in Constitutional law where secession and state’s rights are concerned. The fact that he ordered the murder of unarmed black P.O.W.s and continued an absolutely unwinnable war that cost thousands of lives on either side rather than surrender or negotiate, then fled rather than faced the Union like his generals and his men did, all brand him as an arrogant bloody coward.
As to whether Lincoln would have refused to discuss a peace treaty that allowed the South to keep slaves, all you can express is your opinion. Lincoln, not a terribly popular president, fighting a very unpopular war that had already killed members of his own family on both sides, suffering from depression at feelings of his own failure (and the death of his son) and facing an upcoming election and the enormous financial costs of war, would almost certainly have negotiated on the issue of slavery. A compromise along the lines of “those who are currently slaves will remain so for 20 years or until their death, those born after today are born free” as had been proposed already by both northern and southern statesemen probably would have stood a good chance of being accepted. (Slavery was damned as an economic institution anyway: Irish & Chinese immigrants were both cheaper to maintain and harder workers, the Suez Canal was already planned and Egyptian and Indian cotton was already affecting the southern market, etc.).
Me, too. I tried googling “judy martz” + “various combinations of the alleged quote”, and came up empty handed. She has problems complying with certain aspects of the NCLB act, claiming it puts an ureasonable burden on small, rural school districts. Link:
I’m torn. There are some many different criteria to choose from.
Teddy Roosevelt is in the running for me–Mr. Jingo himself.
Can one noiminate a myth?–those stories (Victorian) about Archie someone or other who “pulled himself up by his bootstraps” and went from destitution to wealth? We carry that legacy today–myths have a way of floating above reality.
So much has happened since Nixon–he looks kinda amatuerish now.
I do sincerely vote for Reagan–thank you for closing all those mental health facilities-it was a real help with the homeless problem.
How about Rove? He’s done more damage than alot of folks. Or Cheney–evil incarnate and righteous to boot.
Aaron Burr is a good choice.
Dobson is also good.
How about that judge who made Baby Richard go back to Otto, his dad–over the protests of his adopted parents, his social worker etc. Otto kept him for about a year and I don’t know what happened to Baby Richard after that.
OK-that doesn’t make him the worst American. too many criteria for this old brain.
The Horatio Alger stories? The main thing I remember about his tales is that the hero usually got rich by some deus-ex-machina ending: he marries the daughter of the bank president, or he saves a baby from the railroad tracks and miraculously it’s the grandchild of the railroad owner who in appreciation makes him VP of the railroad or other contrived endings. (The main thing I remember about the man himself is that there’s good evidence he was an ephebophile and that after publishing twenty gazillion books and being the best paid author of his century he died broke from lavish living and bad business decisions.)
Thank you–it was starting to drive me nuts that I couldn’t recall the name.
We learned about these stories in US History–as part of the Robber Baron Era (aka Victorian America, if one can call it that).
So I nominate Horatio Alger and his myth. I don’t recall his protagonists marrying well–if they did, it was as a “reward” for all that damn bootstrap pulling!
According to the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_M._House), House was a pro-British American statesman who influenced President Wilson in his decision to enter WWI. What does he have in common with the founder of a pro-republican secret society in 18th-Century Bavaria?
Col. House gets blamed for the Federal Reserve Act as well as the Council
on Foreign Relations, both of which he had some involvement in. Conspiracy theorists think that the Federal Reserve and the CFR are part of some plan to destroy American sovereignty and establish a global government.
Does anyone remember “The Devil and Daniel Webster” by Stephen Vincent Benét? Doesn’t anyone read 1930s American short stories anymore?
Remember the jury that the Devil called to try the guy whose soul he claimed? The defense lawyer (Daniel Webster) insisted that the guy be tried by an all-American jury. So the Devil called… who all was there, help me remember… the most bloodthirsty, the rottenest all-stars from American history: “Teach the Pirate,” King Philip (with the tomahawk still in his cranium), Benedict Arnold… Americans all.
