The Twenty Most Evil? Really?
Aug. 14th, 2010 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redneckgaijinApparently 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)
... 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)
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Re: I'm gonna get yelled at fa' sure...
Date: 2010-08-17 08:32 pm (UTC)Two points about Abraham Lincoln. First, prior to Lincoln, there was still a bureaucracy in Washington- he merely expanded it and took the first steps towards a permanent bureaucratic class. This sounds horrible... until you consider that prior to Lincoln every job- EVERY SINGLE JOB IN WASHINGTON- could change hands every election, and could be filled by people wholly unqualified for the work except in their support of the incoming administration or party in power. The professional civil service (which really didn't get going until the assassination of James Garfield) was a step forward, not back, for good government and liberty alike.
Second: the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in areas not, as of January 1, under the control of the Federal government. That said, after the Proclamation, every place the Union armies went they brought emancipation- for good or ill- with them. (One of the most outrageous incidents of the war was when Union general Jefferson C. Davis- no relation- during Sherman's March to the Sea pulled up the bridges behind his division and stranded close to 10,000 slaves to be recaptured or killed by Confederates and outlaws shadowing Sherman's army.) Lincoln didn't free any slave just by issuing an order, but the order gave his armies the ability to gut slavery like a fish being cleaned.