The Twenty Most Evil? Really?

[redneckgaijin]

Apparently some right-wing blogger asked his friends to vote on who the most evil Americans in all history were. The results have Barack Obama being more evil than Timothy McVeigh, Richard Nixon, Benedict Arnold, and Jeffrey Dahmer (who didn't even make the list)... but slightly less evil than the worst man America has ever claimed for a citizen...

... Jimmy Carter.

This result so disgusted another conservative blogger that he made his own, saner list... which, of course, I find a bit incomplete myself.

Of course, this is a game anybody can play, so let's play it.

Who, in your opinion, are the twenty most evil Americans in history? You do NOT have to put them in order if you don't want to. If I get enough responses, I'll tally them, like that original blogger did, and rank them based on number of mentions in lists- not position in lists.

So, post! And forward the challenge, and let me know where to look! It's meme time (I hope)!

EDIT: How do I define "most evil?" For my part, there have to be three criteria involved. First, the person themselves must be, by their nature, evil- which I define as selfish to the point of completely ignoring the consequences to others of their actions. "What's good for me is good for America," "I am the voice of the American people," and "The ends justify the means," are all to me statements of evil intent.

Second, the person involved must have done significant harm to others- a LOT of others- and thus, with few exceptions, must have exercised power of some sort. Only truly egregious mass murderers (like Charles Manson, Jim Jones, or Jeffrey Dahmer) should even be considered (and I only put one on my personal list). By and large these should be people of great wealth, great authority, or both.

Third, the person involved should have few if any redeeming values or qualities. Despite his ruthlessness in creating and building his empire, I don't list Bill Gates because of his truly vast philanthropical works- ditto Andrew Carnegie (whose estate is still giving to charity almost a century after his death) and J. P. Morgan (who twice saved the country from a financial depression). The only exception should be if the act of evil that defines the person was so egregious as to wipe out all other considerations (for example Benedict Arnold).

That's what I judge by, anyway.


Putting them in historical order:

BENEDICT ARNOLD
ANDREW JACKSON
JOHN C. CALHOUN
JAMES K. POLK
WILLIAM WALKER
WILLIAM QUANTRILL
JOHN CHIVINGTON
JOHN WILKES BOOTH
WILLIAM TWEED
THOMAS EDISON
AL CAPONE
J. EDGAR HOOVER
GEORGE LINCOLN ROCKWELL
RICHARD DALEY, SR.
L. RON HUBBARD
RICHARD NIXON
JEFFREY DAHMER
TIMOTHY McVEIGH
ROGER AILES
RICHARD CHENEY

EDIT: some I considered who didn't make the cut, but are still evil in my book
Woodrow Wilson (he'd be my #21)
James Buchanan
Clyde Barrow
D. W. Griffith
Robert Barnwell Rhett
Jefferson Davis (not for being the Confederate President, but for working so hard after the war to create the myth of the Lost Cause and of the unimportance of slavery in the war)
Jim Jones (decided against because Jonestown wasn't in America)
Benjamin Butler
Lyndon B. Johnson (too many good intentions and good deeds; he was the ultimate case of "ends justify the means")
Philip Sheridan (even more of an Indian-killer than Chivington, but at least he never used murder to win votes)

Comments

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

Our lists overlap by two names. More than I expected.
:-)

Abraham Lincoln
Woodrow Wilson
Franklin Roosevelt
Lyndon Johnson
Harry Truman

Alexander Hamilton
Henry Clay
William Sherman
Theodore Roosevelt
Herbert Hoover

Richard Nixon
George W. Bush
Barack Obama
Paul Tibbets
Paul Warburg

Nelson Aldrich
Benjamin Strong
J. Edgar Hoover
Alan Greenspan
Robert Moses

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

I understand your reasoning behind most of them (and agree, with caveats, in about half the cases)...

... but why on earth General Sherman? Granted he was a pioneer in the tactic of total war, but after the war he worked hard to help the South rebuild. His goal in harsh measures was to end the war as swiftly as possible- not to exact revenge (except for South Carolina, where he did admit to wanting to "bring the war home to those who started it"). I don't see him as being particularly evil, either for his time or on an absolute level- and there are plenty of commanders in the war (Forrest, Sheridan, Porter, Jefferson C. Davis (Union general), Pope, Butler, Ewell, Lyon, Quantrill and Morgan all come to mind) who were demonstrably more evil than he.

[silussa.livejournal.com]

Which notes why Sherman is on my tentative list. Admittedly, the man has a lot to say for him.

However, he was also one of the first to apply the concept of "total war"....and I can't help but think that, whatever the logic was for doing so, it's a development we all could have lived without.

Especially if you happened to be in the path of his March.

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

It was primarily because of his waging total war and his vengeful attacks on South Carolina (what happened to Columbia was morally equivalent to the firebombing of Dresden), that I see him as being particularly evil. Some of the names on my list are there because they pioneered profoundly evil doctrines or practices. Sherman was called the first modern general, and I think it's an apt (and not a complimentary) description. YMMV, of course.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

The irony in your statement is that the Columbia fire was started by the retreating Confederates. They set fire to warehouses chock full of stockpiled cotton to deny it to the Union, and the fire spread through the city. Incoming Union soldiers ended up fighting the fires rather than starting them in that particular case.

What happened in the rest of the state, though, was for the most part Union destruction for destruction's sake. And all accounts agree that the destruction ceased almost magically at the North Carolina state line.