# Would you prevent any of history's famous assassinations? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 7, 2014, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-prevent-any-of-historys-famous-assassinations/687901 "2014-05-07T17:55:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2014, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-prevent-any-of-historys-famous-assassinations/687901/1 "2014-05-07T17:55:59Z")
It’s been pretty well agreed that killing Hitler would, while satisfying in the short term, be a bad idea in the long term simply because we don’t completely know where the course of history would progress. So, let’s flip it around-instead of who would you kill, who would you save? Which person would have the most positive influence on history? JFK, RFK, MLK, Gandi? Feel free to choose another. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2014, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-prevent-any-of-historys-famous-assassinations/687901/2 "2014-05-07T17:59:49Z")
Lincoln would definitely change the course of US history. He would have listened to his generals and not removed the army from the South so quickly, and would have been a far more conciliatory figure than Andrew Johnson – and would have the moral authority to deal with the Radical Republicans. ---
**Author:** ![Love\_Rhombus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/love_rhombus/32/10694_2.png) [@Love\_Rhombus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Love_Rhombus)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2014, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-prevent-any-of-historys-famous-assassinations/687901/3 "2014-05-07T18:14:43Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Lincoln would definitely change the course of US history. He would have listened to his generals and not removed the army from the South so quickly, and would have been a far more conciliatory figure than Andrew Johnson – and would have the moral authority to deal with the Radical Republicans. :smack: How did I not think of him right off the bat? ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2014, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-prevent-any-of-historys-famous-assassinations/687901/4 "2014-05-07T20:20:27Z")
Lincoln, of course. MLK and RFK, in a heartbeat. MLK, to continue the fight for racial equality past basic civil rights to economic rights. When he was gunned down, he was in Memphis to lend his support to a sanitation workers’ strike. A few more years of that, and there’d be no way today’s conservatives could claim that if he’d been around today he’d have been on their side, because all he sought was equality under the law. RFK, because he should have been the Dem nominee in 1968, and almost certainly would have been, after winning California. And he would have beat Nixon (hell, given that Hubert almost pulled it off, how could RFK have missed?), and would have been a very progressive President. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2014, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-prevent-any-of-historys-famous-assassinations/687901/5 "2014-05-07T20:36:00Z")
As a loosey-lefty liberal, I’d prevent damn near any murder you can point to… At this moment, I honestly can’t think of an actual historical assassination of which I wholly approve. (But I do confess, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or maybe Kim-Il Sung or Francisco Franco, are all tempting targets.) Assassinations tend to be destabilizing and ultimately self-defeating. They don’t tend to work out the way the planners had in mind. And reprisals are a stone-cold bitch. ---
**Author:** ![jayrey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/47e85d/32.png) [@jayrey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayrey)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2014, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-prevent-any-of-historys-famous-assassinations/687901/6 "2014-05-07T20:40:02Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Lincoln would definitely change the course of US history. He would have listened to his generals and not removed the army from the South so quickly, and would have been a far more conciliatory figure than Andrew Johnson – and would have the moral authority to deal with the Radical Republicans. Lincoln is also who I immediately thought of. Reconstruction would have gone very differently if he’d lived to lead it.