A Challenge To The Blogosphere: 'The Ten Worst Americans' List (CONST. UPDATED)

Raffaello Sanzio 'St Michael and the Satan' ca.1518, The Louvre, Paris

CONSTANTLY UPDATED, ONTO OUR THIRTEENTH DAY NOW, SCROLL DOWN

Historians have put together a list of the ten worst Britons in the last 1000 years, one for each Century, for the BBC History Magazine, and I propose a challenge to the Blogosphere: 'The Ten Worst Americans' List in the last 230 odd years.

As a post Christmas/Hannukah Challenge, I invited the Blogosphere to name 'The Ten Worst Americans' in the last, well it will have to be 230 odd years! Considering most on the Brit list are Aristocrats (including Jack The Ripper, believed to be somehow linked to The Prince of Wales), we may have our job cut out for us.

Don't forget that each person will have a vastly different understanding of wickedness. What you consider the definition of evil, will be very different to someone else's, and it's your definition of wickedness that will give us such a diverse selection of figures on our list of evilness in America, which is what will make it so interesting. The left and the right are most welcome, let's spice it up....enjoy!

Michelle Malkin, Sister Toldjah  John Hawkins @ Right Wing News, Bill & Clayton @ The Daily Pundit and Greg @ Political Pit Bull help spread the word about my challenge. Also the cool Barry Johnson @ The Royal Flush & Blogs For Condi, and Ankle Biting Pundits. Lorelle VanFossen, who is behind the success of WordPress Codex, is my exciting new find. Thanks guys, ahem and girls..... 

Ed Morrissey @ Captain's Quarters has responded and will be posting his list later but his readers have some interesting choices thus far.

UPDATE: Ed has just posted his list together with incredible dialogue which is divided into groups of three posts due to length, and is a brilliant not to be missed. Having spent some quality time on this, he will definitely have some bloggers scrambling for their keyboards. His explanation of the list is here:

"Speaking from a historical perspective, it really is quite difficult to come up with a list of "worst Americans". Most of our history is spent pursuing what we did well, and our failures tend to get shoved under the carpet. Some people simply rise to the occasion, however, and our history has its fair share of the scandalous and the downright evil.....In the end, I came up with ten that I think will be intriguing and provocative, and I wrote explanations for each. Below you will find posts in groups of three, except for #1 which will have its own spot. The essays make it too long to put into a single post. I'm going to really enjoy the commentary for each of these, and I think we will have a great debate over this -- and I may just surprise a few people."

His Number One is flying solo. Numbers Two - Four are here. Numbers Five - Seven are here. Numbers Eight - Ten are here.

Glenn Greenwald has just posted his. Glenn is a brilliant blogger and although our opinions more often than not differ, I have a great deal of respect for his sound reasoning, ahem.....most of the time (I reserve my judgment on the inclusion of the LGF commenters on the list! LOL!).
Chris Bertram @ Crooked Timber gives the thumbs down to the Producer of Friends, and lets his readers decide the rest.
The Commissar @ The Politburo Diktat, seems to have an obsession with Chris Bertram so here is his ahem, take.

Our favorite cartoonist Chris Muir has just posted his list in the Comments section below, and directly below him is the great list compiled by John Morrissey @ Powerline.

Dafydd @ Big Lizzards, one of my favorite Bloggers (who needs a pair of glasses), posts his list with extensive not to be missed explanations.

The Anchoress still feels she'd like to keep thinking about Christmas, but loves the painting of St. Michael.
Sigmund Carl & Alfred has posted The Worst Americans of 2005
Jeff Goldstein@ Proten Wisdom has posted his brilliantly funny list here.
Rick @ De Civitate Dei has a list with humorous explanations and photographs, which I know from expreience take a lot of trouble to compile
Fake But Accurate has  quite an incredible article with, not quite a list, but a single culprit.....

Memeorandum has featured the post here.

Josh Minton is the first in, and has posted his reply here.
My friend David @ Third World County has his list with wonderful explanations and ends with a poem from Kipling.
My friend Robert Pearson @ The New Victorian has his thoughtful response here.
My friend @ Media Lies has posted in the comment section below
The great blogger Daniel W. Drezner puts his list up here.

Gorgeous Pamela @ Atlas Shrugs has her list up here.
My friend Doug @ Below The Beltway has posted his here.
Adam has given us an extensive post, with photographs!
Brian @ Uncooprative Blogger's answer is here.
Sean @ The American Mind rises to the challenge
John Norris Brown has his compiled list here.

California Conservative's emailed answer kinda goes something like this.( Michelle Malkin's answer to LGF's Idiotarian list)
Eugene @ The Volokh Conspiracy has got it, so let's see what he comes up with.  
Steve @ Secure Liberty has a rather wonderful blog, and an interesting list here, focusing on enemies of liberty.
Robert Hayes @ The Argument Clinic posted here.
Blogs For Industry has his list here. 
Ramjac @ Rammin & Jammin has a cool list with succinct explanations.

Betsy Newmark  comments on the Brit list.
CM Cornell @ Yelling At The Windshield has risen to the challenge here.
The Glittering Eye has his answers here.
Brian @ The Iowa Voice posts his list here, with some interesting explanations.
Scott Olson @ The Trading Post here.
Solomon @ Left Behinds, with the view from the left, as well as Frank Warner whose list is here.

Robert Farley @ Lawyers Guns & Money can't resist: "Reading the comments is fun; if you've ever doubted whether the right has more spite, anger, hatred, and vitriol than the left, please put those concerns aside. Including Martin Luther King was not enough for one enlightened commenter; she decided to put every African-American on her list. Jimmy Carter seems to be a mainstay on the conservative lists, as does Earl Warren." Then he upsets me and puts Mickey Kaus on the list. I like Mickey Kaus is that wrong? LOL...

Joe @ The Heretik asks: "Only Ten?"
Ampersand @ Alas A Blog response is here.
The Dodo @ Life Like Pundits, gives us his list here.
Greg Prince has his list here.
Neo-neocon's cool list is here.

David Wyman @ The Village Idiot chooses his list of six and four with extensive notes, from those whose actions had the worst effects, regardless of intent.
The Bullwinkle Blog posts his here.
Peter Levine provides us with ten of the worst as well as ten of the best
Jill @ Yellowsnapdragons has her list here.

The Common Room's response is here.
Bill @ The Florida Masochist posts a few, and points us to his Knucklehead of the Year Award.
Another list from the left side of the Blogosphere, Minipundit's choices are here. 
Jess @ Life..... presents hers.
DW @ Four Right Wing Whackos puts his list together here within an extensive post. 

Houblog's selection is here, and includes the Dishonorable Mentions that didn't make the cut.
Raspberry Swirl has hers here.
The Squiggles Blog has squiglled hers here.
Gahrie's list is here.
Anthony @ Tangerines... (aka The Pink Moose, which I prefer) has his list here. 

Mary Madigan @ Exit Zero has her list divided in categories.Bruce Armstrong @ Ordinary Every Day Christian has his top ten choices listed.
Jamie @ Eye Of The Polyphemus has his compiled list here.
Mike @ Hidden Genius, and his reluctant list here.
Walter In Denver puts forward his list here. 

Salt or Salty Vicar to his friends has posted his list here.
Scott @ Ah Shoot posts his list making sure he looks at no one else's first.
Elliot @ From Where I Sit has his choices here.
Scantron @ WAHC has a 'Worst Americans of 2005' list.
Jimmie @ Sundries Shack has joined in the fun with his list here. Glad you made it Jimmie.
Black Guile posts his list here.

Ben @ Badger Blues, calls it a stupid list, and then proceeds to make one anyway.
Jon Sullivan's list is here.
Oscar @ Against Them All has posted in the comment section below
Aggravated DocSurg has his, ahem, one worst American of all time.
The Watcher of Weasels chimes in here.
Chutney @ My Irony has her list here.

Say Anything has a list here and "pays more attention to the actual effects of a person’s actions than to a person’s intent" 
Greg Prince @ Uncorrelated has his list here.
Rad Geek has although reluctantly, posted his here. with extensive explanations and some names that have not appeared elsewhere.
David Chung @ Dis-oriented puts forward his list here

I'll keep you posted with the latest as they come in. Much more in the Comments and TrackBack section below. As you know, the challenge has been going on for some thirteen days now, and spreading like bushfire through the Blogosphere with almost a 120 000 odd people having had a look so far.

It is very interesting how a few names are emerging as a constant. On everyone's lips and the number one favorite is Benedict Arnorld, very closely followed by Jimmy Carter, Joseph McArthy,  Richard Nixon, George Soros, Aaron Burr, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (no particular order). Jane Fonda has appeared on quite a few lists, and so has George Bush, J. E. Hoover, John Kerry, Lyndon Johnson and Alger Hiss.

Comments

[jeff]

What are these wingnut troll dudes smoking? Also, can I have some?

[mark patterson]

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER OF STUPIDITY,THESE ARE MY SELECTIONS FOR WORST AMERICAN.first,george bush and the republican "conservatives",who for 11 years have amassed the GREATEST DEBT AND DEFICIT IN 200 YEARS,IF THIS IS "CONSERVATIVE",I WOULD HATE TO SEE WHAT "LIBERALS" WOULD HAVE DONE. sen. joe mccarthy,for spoiling our freedom.nixon for lying about "ending" vietnam,and his tapes in which he proved he was a racist,awful president,he did some good things,but let allot of americans die in the "iraq" of his time.ENRON AND EXXON,FOR SCREWING AMERICA.pat robertson and falwell,for making jesus a "warrior,and conservative",of which i am sure he was NOT.ABRAMOFF AND ALL LOBBYISTS,ALL CONGRESSMEN WHO TAKE ANY MONEY,SHOULD BE FIRED,PERIOD,END OF CONVERSATION,DOESN'T MATTER THE PARTY,FIRE THE BASTARDS.reagan,who did NOT end communism,it was bankrupt and failing in the early 1960's,ALL HE DID WAS RAISE THE DEBT TO 2 TRILLION,WASTED IT ON "MILITARY" CONTRACTS.rush limbaugh for lying constantly,proven liar,and drug abuser WHO SHOULD BE IN JAIL FOR USING 12 DOCTORS TO GET LEVEL 1 (HEROIN) AND IS GETTING AWAY WITH IT,BECAUSE HE IS RICH,AND REPUBLICAN.losing track of rotten scumbags but ann coulter should be there,for being a pure nazi,beautiful,attractive,SMART,and above all,evil and wrong.donald rumsfeld for starting a war WITH NO PROTECTIVE ARMOUR FOR THE TROOPS,AND NOT ENOUGH TO DO THE JOB RIGHT.and of course tom delay,for spending his whole career,on vacation at 5 star hotels,restaurants.o.j. simpson and the BLACKS who supported him,FOR PROVING TO ALL THE WORLD THAT PREJUDICE IS NOT ONLY THE "WHITE MANS GAME",PROVING BLACKS ARE JUST AS PREJUDICED,AND UNJUST AS THE WHITES.

[Ken Pierce]

I'm a libertarian myself and even I know Rand was a second-rate philosopher at best. What I remember most about her stuff (which isn't much since I haven't read it in years; it's the sort of thing that impresses you when you're an undergraduate but then later on you grow up)...what I remember is how contemptuous she was of "altruism" -- and how patently clear it was that she hadn't the foggiest idea of what the word actually meant, or of how genuine altruists such as Mother Theresa think about and live out morality. If there's one thing the twentieth century has proved, it's that the social circles of the intelligentsia consider that so long as one is prepared to sneer at Christianity, one may spare oneself the trouble of first understanding it.

Having said that, I wouldn't put her on any Worst Americans list because (1) anything Ayn Rand could do badly, Noam Chomsky can do worse, and (2) she didn't actually have very much influence outside of the intelligentsia, IMHO.

[Stefan]

I knew some people would take issue with putting Rand on the list and I have no problem with that. I know she is an icon of the Libertarians and with some in the Libertarian “wing” of the Republican Party. Here is my reasoning and you are free to disagree, of course. As author Donald De Marco puts it: Rand believed that “an individual belongs to himself as an individual. He does not belong, in any measure, to God or to society” and her “basic premise is that “altruism”, or the sacrifice of one’s reality—one’s individuality—for a reality other that the self, is necessarily self-destructive therefore immoral. This is why she can say “altruism holds death as its ultimate goal and standard of value.” In contrast, individualism, cultivated through the “virtue of selfishness”, is the only path to life.” She also said that “Man has to be man—by choice; he has to hold his life as a value—by choice; he has to learn to sustain it—by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues—by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality.” This ultimately leaves individual as the highest arbitrator of right and wrong. It is the philosophy of pure selfishness. This is incompatible with a Christian understanding of reality and as a Christian I am required to reject it as false and destructive both for the individual and for any society that would embrace this attitude. Rand lived her philosophy out in her own life and was unconcerned with anything but herself. She managed to push away everyone she ever knew and died lonely and miserable but she was true to her beliefs. She was an admirer of Nietzsche and she was the most influential American moral relativist in the last 100 years; and relativism is the biggest problem to be overcome in the “culture wars”.

[Roy W. Wright]

Yeah, Ayn was a real villain. You guys are nutcases; I'm out of here.

[Sarah]

Ayn Rand should definetely be on the list.

[Stefan]

Ten in no order:
1) Margaret Sanger (Eugenicist, Founder of Planned Parenthood)
2) Alfred Kinsey (Fabricated sexual research, mainstreamed
sexual perversions, Godfather of the “Sexual Revolution”)
3) Ayn Rand (Will-Worshipping Philosopher, American queen of
moral relativism)
4) Peter Singer (Chair of Bio-ethics at Princeton University,
Champion of Euthanasia/infanticide)
5) Derek Humphry (Champion of Euthanasia, Founder of the Hemlock
Society)
6) Henry Kissinger (Author of the “Kissinger Report” which began
US policies to export abortion to the third world, champion
of Real Politick)
7) Chief Justice Roger B Taney (Supreme Court Justice, Presided
over Dred Scott decision)
8) Chief Justice Harry Blackman (Supreme Court Justice, Presided
over Roe vs. Wade decision)
9) (Co-winners) Charles Ruthenberg, John Reed, and Benjamin
Gitlow (co-founders of the American Communist Party, Soviet
Agents, and Traitors)
10) Aaron Burr (American VP, killed Alexander Hamilton,conspired
to take land from the Western Territories and Mexico to form
his own empire)

[Ken Pierce]

I don't think so but I'm hardly omniscient.

[babylonandon]

I could have sworn I read that Soros was a naturalized US citizen...ooopppss.

If not I'd replace him with Margaret Sangor - the witch started most of this socialist garbage.

[Ken Pierce]

Wayne, a technical point: George Soros is not an American.

I'm very late to the party, but eventually got around to making the following comments over at Redneck Peril:

I'm such a geeky linguist dude.

When Alexandra challenged the blogosphere to list the Worst Americans of all time, my own reaction was to meditate on what it could mean to be "the worst," a word which is certainly one of the least precise in any language. I never got around to providing my own Top Ten list, but it got me thinking of how you would go about building one; and that led to my remembering that evil is really either absent or perverted good; and from there I decided that if I were going to build a Top Ten list I would want to define the different kinds of excellence, and then look for influential people who failed significantly in those types of excellence. Thus Jimmy Carter and Billy Sunday (Prohibitionist) would both show up high on the chart of "opposite of wise," on the far end of the spectrum from, say, Benjamin Franklin.

I was particularly struck by how easy it would be to list "opposite of chaste" people and how very hard indeed it is to find a notable twentieth-century American whose defining characteristic was chastity. (Sheldon Vanauken would top my list but he's hardly famous outside of Christian circles.) There are, of course, lots of chaste people, but my point is that no American gets famous for chastity, because Americans think of chastity as a negative, rather than as a postive, virtue -- it's not something you do, but rather something you don't do. But that has to be totally wrong, for it is evil that is the absence of virtue, not the other way around. Anybody who's read and loved the Divine Comedy knows (at second hand, at least) the positive, powerful, overflowing nature of Beatrice's chastity (which is not at all the same thing as virginity); but then not many Americans read the Divine Comedy and you can count on one hand the number of American Christians out of every thousand who actually love it.

At any rate, I found Alexandra's post very highly thought-provoking, kicking off meditations on the nature of good and evil and the various classifications thereof, and bringing to my attention the need to concentrate on making sure my own teenagers (I have eight children) come to see sexual purity as something more than mere abstinence.

I doubt I'll finish the Top Ten list, but if I were going to, I think I would come up with a list of Americans I most admire, isolate the positive characteristic that best defines them, and then try to define the essence of that characteristic, and then look for the antitype. Patriotism? George Washington; antitype, Benedict Arnold. Wisdom? Benjamin Franklin; antitypes Jimmy Carter, "The-South-Is-Avenged" Boothe, Billy Sunday and the rest of the Temperance movement, and every single member of the Sixties generation that ever thought John Lennon was an intellectual and a philosopher, or who bought into "never trust anybody over thirty" or whatever the exact quote was. Humility? Abraham Lincoln and Billy Graham; antitype (beyond any question) Henry Kissinger. Love across social boundaries? Martin Luther King, Jr.; antitypes Stephen Douglas, Louis Farrakhan. The ability to write gorgeously? F. Scott Fitzgerald (who, alas, had nothing to say, but said it with the pen of an angel); antitype Joseph Smith (winner of special Lifetime Achievement version of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest). And so forth.

Note that if you're looking for failure in intellectual excellence (the effective use of God-given intelligence in pursuit of the country's welfare) then Jimmy Carter is a spectacularly bad American (it's hard to imagine a more thoroughly sinking feeling than the one I would feel if somebody were to inform me that Jimmy Carter has decided to help me out); but if you're looking for failure in moral excellence and selflessness then Jimmy's not even under consideration. It all depends on what you mean by "worst." I think that was what really got Alexandra interested in the project: any person's Worst Ten Americans list is going to tell you far more about the person who drew up the list than it will tell you about the people who made that particular cut.

Note: this post started out as a couple of comments at The Questioning Christian, who thought Alexandra's post was "mean-spirited," a response that is not I think fair to Alexandra, but does seem to resonate with Her Anchorship's recent meditations. (The Anchoress does not mention Alexandra specifically and is mostly meditating on her own attitudes.)

[wayne]

1)John Kerry - traitor, helped VC to defeat US. Hyperliberal
2)Edward Kennedy - traitor, killed aid while drunk driving. Hyperliberal.
3)John Walker - traitor gave military codes to USSR, killed as many as 20,000 of our soldiers.
4)George Soros - supercommunist leader of WWP, deteremined to bring down US.
5)John Wilkes Boothe - killed Lincoln bringing in Johnson starting post-war oppression of African Americans.
6)Andrew Johnson - President who encouraged defeated Confederacy to continue its racist culture, Jim Crow laws, and the KKK.
7)Benjamin Spock - created the practices of permissive child-upbringing and was responsible for much of the undisciplined self-centered culture that exists today.
8,9) Timothy Mcveigh/Terry Nichols helped Islamists to murder 169 innocent Americans
10) Jimmy Carter - Most incompetant President, gutted military, and allowed Islamists to overthrow our best ally in the Middle East. Completely mishandled act of war by Iran and humiliated whole country in the eyes of the world.

[Roy W. Wright]

What an intelligent an convincing argument. (By the way, I wouldn't personally care if Bush were impeached.)

[prozacula]

lincoln? mlk? blacks? you are a bunch of racist freaks. back to your 1960's segregationist hole, stinking pustules! it depresses me to no end that our country is filled with simpleminded morons like yourselves. impeach a man for lying about sex, but don't impeach a man for lying about war, spying on americans (like your idol nixon), or abrogating our constitution day in and day out.

freaks!

[Roy W. Wright]

This is my first time here, so I'm not entirely sure where you guys are coming from, but come on! John Wilkes Booth? If anyone, Lincoln should be on the list.

[hawkeyegop]

Great idea! Compiling the list was harder than I thought. My list includes:

* 7 men and 3 women
* 2 soldiers, 4 politicians and 2 actors
* 8 dead and 2 living
* 1 US President, i Vice President and 1 presidential candidate

You can view the list on the dis-oriented blog.

[mark]

Henry Ford, industrial fascist and globally influential anti-semite

[No Blood for Hubris]

1. George W. Bush
2. Dick Cheney
3. Rush Limbaugh
4. Donald Rumsfeld
5. Joe McCarthy
6. Dick Nixon
7. Grover Norquist
8. Fred Phelps
9. Ann Coulter
10. Phyllis Schlafly

[Oskar Shapley]

9. Lincoln - ruined and conflicted his own country. Set back the economic development by ca. two decades.
8. Bill Clinton - you all know why.
7. Chomsky - for corrupting the impressionable minds of America's youth. Instead of joining the CIA, the best and brightest of America's universities want now to become so-called 'alterglobalists'.
6. Charly Chaplin - popularized Communism in America.
5. Bob Woodward - brought down America's most effective government and set back the Conservative Revolution by over 30 years.
4. Eisenhower - mostly for his stupid 'Military-Industrial Complex' farewell adress which gave Chomsky and all anarchist fruitcakes an argument that will be repeated forever in quasi-academic 'discussions'; Lost N. Korea.
3. JFK - dethroned Eisenhower by lying about the fake Missile Gap, lost Cuba to the Commies when it was winnable.
2. Nixon - Lost Vietnam, appeased the Sinofascists, gave the Liberals an easy win and an eternal reason of smile.
1. Rosa Parks - all the uppity and restlessness started right down with her. If the rest of the country hadn't followed her lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years.

[Michael Connolly]

His lasting legacy is the popularization of oral sex among children.

Lee Duigon's hilarious spoof of demented wingnut thought reminds me of the evening in 2000 when Ralph Reed came to Boston's Fanueil Hall and my friend Bob and I got front row center seats, right beneath Ralph's podium. Fifteen minutes into his harangue, Reed said that teenage use of marijuana was increasing because of Clinton's behavior in the 70's.

The thought that any teenager would take a US President as a positive role model - or need the President's "example" to induce pot-smoking - caused us first to giggle, then guffaw helplessly until tears ran down our faces. The whole audience joined in. Reed was non-plussed. He expected attacks from us lefties, but not laughter.

So, keep up the good work, Lee! I can just see the 10 year olds now, saying, "Psst. President Clinton (you know the guy who was President before we were born) got blow jobs! Let's do it!"
Happy New Year!

[Marcus Cato]

Thomas Jefferson: impregnated a negro
Tip O'Neill: leader of international Jewry
Dwight Eisenhower: appeased Arab Islamofascists in Egypt
Soupy Sales: undermined the moral fabric of America's youth, lost China
Kenneth Starr: always making lewd kissy-faces to me during public appearances, even on national television, as if I would have anything to do with that kind of filth
Scarlett Johanssen: rudely and litigiously rejected my woven intimate-hair mementos
Uncle Dad: never loved me until bedtime
Everett Dirksen: bloodsucking intergalactic robot cockroach-hookworm cyborg from the flaming maw of Dis, capital of hell

[orangemike]

Ayn Rand has to be number one; her evil philosophy has been more effective than those of Stalin or Hitler.

[Josh]

This is for all you complete idiots who posted anything having to do with the ACLU, especially the complete idiot known as Francis McNulty. Next time, try to get your facts straight. Idiots.

http://www.aclu.org/religion/tencomm/16254res20050302.html

September 20, 2005: ACLU of New Jersey joins lawsuit supporting second-grader's right to sing "Awesome God" at a talent show.

August 4, 2005: ACLU helps free a New Mexico street preacher from prison.

November 20, 2004: ACLU of Nevada supports free speech rights of evangelists to preach on the sidewalks of the strip in Las Vegas.

November 9, 2004: ACLU of Nevada defends a Mormon student who was suspended after wearing a T-shirt with a religious message to school.

July 10, 2004: Indiana Civil Liberties Union defends the rights of a Baptist minister to preach his message on public streets.

June 3, 2004: Under pressure from the ACLU of Virginia, officials agree not to prohibit baptisms on public property in Falmouth Waterside Park in Stafford County.

[Jeremiah]

to Tom the Redhunter (and everyone else),
I agree with you. That's why I said a few words about my criteria and made an effort to spread my picks out across generations.
Jeremiah

[Lee Duigon]

My 10 Worst Americans by Lee Duigon

Alexandra Von Maltzan of All Things Beautiful has challenged the blogosphere to name "The 10 Worst Americans of All Time" (http://www.allthingsbeautiful.com/all things beautiful/2005/12/a challenge to .html). She has a ton of entries so far. Here's mine.

In compiling my list, I've left out serial murderers (how is one murder worse than another?), the merely loathsome (you can name as many as I can), and tried not to give in to strictly personal prejudice.

For most of my selections I took as my guide the Biblical tag attached to Jeroboam I, King of Israel, "who made Israel to sin" (by setting up idols). His actions did permanent damage to his country. I would say the same of the characters in my rogues' gallery below.

1. Alfred Kinsey. I can't think of any one person who did more lasting harm to American than this fraudulent and sometimes criminal "sex researcher," who died from practicing a perversion for which the English language has no word. Kinsey's bogus "findings" changed the moral landscape of America, in much the same way that Hurricane Katrina changed the physical landscape of New Orleans. But the damage to New Orleans will be repaired long before America gets out from under Kinsey, which may be never. As the father of the Sexual Revolution, we'll have Kinsey to thank if we ever get around to legalizing pedophilia. Meanwhile, his is a legacy of disease, the erosion of the family, and a culture of moral imbecility.

2. Margaret Sanger. The founder of Planned Parenthood and the patron saint of unrestricted abortion, the damage inspired by Sanger has accounted for the deaths of some 40 million innocent, unborn Americans. As if that weren't enough, she was also the fountainhead of radical feminism. And don't forget her now-downplayed crusades for eugenics, ethnic cleansing, and euthanasia! If anyone deserves more than Kinsey to be No. 1 in the hall of infamy, it's Sanger.

3. John Dewey. The more you read this venerated (by the Left) American philosopher, the harder it is to tell the difference between his vision of "democracy" and out-and-out communism. Dewey's writings on education were the key to turning America's public schools into indoctrination centers for collectivism, atheism, and a sugar-coated totalitarianism.

4. Thaddeus Stephens. This Pennsylvania Congressman, a radical Republican, led the drive to undo Abraham Lincoln's plans for national healing and reconciliation, and turned "Reconstruction" into the systematic destruction of the South. Stephens' venomous policies crippled the South economically and spawned racial hatred which has not yet ceased to sicken the body politic. Southern leaders like Wade Hampton, South Carolina, and P.G.T. Beauregard, New Orleans, who saw the need for amity and reconciliation between whites and blacks, could have used some help from Congress in carrying out their healing policies. Thanks to Stephens and his cohorts, they didn't get it. Instead, we got the Ku Klux Klan. Thanks, Thad.

5. Aaron Burr. This bum makes everybody's Worst 10 list. Alexander Hamilton, who had already contributed mightily to the founding of our country, was still a young man when Burr killed him in a duel. It's important to remember that most duels in those days were concluded with a shot into the air, or far off to one side: it was not necessary to kill one's opponent to satisfy the demands of honor. Out of pure personal malice, Burr extinguished one of America's brightest lights before it was done shining, robbing posterity of who-knows-what, or how many, Hamiltonian treasures.

6. Bishop John Shelby Spong. Let Spong stand as a symbol of the apostasy which has all but destroyed America's mainline Protestant churches. He's not the only false prophet who denies the divinity of Christ and the authenticity and authority of Scripture, but he's been among the most visible. If there were a Jeroboam Award for Perverted Theology, Spong would probably win it--or at least get a Lifetime Achievement award from the Academy of Heresy.

7. Madeline Murray O'Hare. Her lawsuit to remove prayer from the public schools was the beginning of immeasurable mischief: the launching of the Supreme Court as all-powerful social engineer, the enthronement of the ACLU's warped version of the First Amendment, and the dedication of our schools to the pursuit of radical secularization. Eat your heart out, Michael Newdow. You're only a pimple; O'Hare was a cancer.

8. Jimmy Carter. The worst president ever, Carter tried to lose the Cold War and almost succeeded. His self-righteous folly in undermining the Shah of Iran saddled the world with a terrorist mullahcracy which is about to obtain nuclear weapons--a development which could lead to a new world war. Meanwhile, Carter continues to do everything in his power to uphold and encourage monsters like Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-Il.

9. Bill Clinton. His presidency would have been inconsequential, but for his inability to control his sexual appetite. This caused his second term to be wasted, when he should have been busy nipping global terrorism in the bud. His lasting legacy is the popularization of oral sex among children.

10. Walter Duranty. As Russian correspondent for the New York Times, he won a Pulitzer Prize for knowingly and deliberately misrepresenting Stalin's regime as a workers' paradise rather than a genocidal hellhole. Duranty pioneered the use of the major news media as a vehicle for disseminating disinformation for political purposes. For corrupting our free press to this day, Duranty deserves a spot on everyone's Worst 10 list.

Finally, dishonorable mentions to Alger Hiss, Jesse Jackson, Peter Singer, Gen. Benjamin Butler, and Jane Fonda.

Happy New Year, everybody.

Lee Duigon is a Christian free-lance writer whose work can be seen regularly at www.chalcedon.edu

[Left Behinds]

We just nominated Oprah, proving that even the left can nominate a putatively liberal black woman if her influence on American culture is that nefarious.

She has created her own paramilitary of self-pitying, self-obsessed whiners. Really, watching daytime television with these hideously tedious women crying about their pissant, bourgeois neuroses AS A REAL WAR GOES ON IN THEIR NAME really makes me wish we could conscript every fat Oprah addict and ship them to Iraq. If they're crying anyhow, at least give them a good reason.

[h0mi]

Surprised few people have mentioned Fred Phelps. While he's thankfully not as well known as some of the others, he's easily 1 of the more despicable bastards. His homophobia is so virulent, he cheerleads american deaths in iraq, since we've "shunned God" or whatever lame excuse he's come up with to cheerlead the 2k+ dead in Iraq & send protesters at funerals cheering the death of another soldier.

I'd list Forrest and Simmons (who founded the 2nd klan) and the justices in the Plessy vs Ferguson decision as well.

[Tom the Redhunter]

Well, it was a good idea, Alexandra.

Unfortunately, it didn't take long for everyone to simply use your idea to push their political agendas.

The idea that in 200+ years people like Lee Atwater, Bill Clinton, Ken Lay, Grover Norquist, Martin Luther King, Pete Rose, Timothy McVeigh, etc, are really in the top 10 is pathetic.

Sorry your idea wasn't taken more seriously.

[Sara]

1. Andrew Jackson- for presiding over our very own genocide
2. Herbert Hoover- for setting the model of presidential idiocy, allowing the people to starve on the basis of half-understood principle.
3. Thomas Jefferson- for setting forth the principles of liberty in a country in which it was legal to enslave people, setting the stage for centuries of American 2+2=5ism. In fact taking in the Louisiana Purchase, much of Jefferson's life was about dearly held principle so long as holding to principle was expedient or convenient or unless he just didn't feel like it. Sound like anyone you know?
4. Richard Nixon- for tainting the presidency with his own particularly seedy musk of paranoia.
5. Ken Lay & his Enron pals- because he is right now getting away with it and we're all gonna pay.
6. Neil Bush- because he got away with it and we all picked up the tab.
7. Grover Norquist- for glorifying the collapse of civil society
8. Newt Gingrich- for his vainglorious coup wrapped in a sweet stinking coat of faux-righteous indiganation
9. Ronald Regan- for sleeping at the goddam wheel
10. George W. Bush- because he's getting away with it and the rest of us are all going to pick up the tab.

[Ken C.]

"Rachel Carson....Because of her book Silent Spring, DDT was banned world wide leading to a drastic increase in yearly malaria deaths which continues to this day.

Malaria causes 1.85 million deaths per year now, mostly in Africa, and the majority of those are children. It used to be even more. The majority of those could have been prevented by DDT."

Hurray! You've just filled in the upper right square:
http://timlambert.org/2005/12/ddt-ban-myth-bingo/

Indeed, continued DDT use in agriculture has increased the resistant mosquito population, making DDT *less effective* in fighting malaria.

Speaking of killing people, the Family Research Council is looking to up its score: with about 3700 dead per year from cervical cancer, they want to stop the use of a vaccine that was 100% effective in clinical trials against two major causes. Kill rate for the FRC: about 2300 per year. Wouldn't want to issue a "licence to engage in premarital sex," after all. Now, *there*'s some evil!

[Jeremiah]

FTR, seconding others' nominees:
KKK founder Nathan Forrest
Eugenicist Margaret Sanger

That makes my ten (in chronological order):
John Wilkes Booth
Nathan Forrest
Margaret Sanger
Paul Robeson
Alger Hiss
Lillian Hellman
Charles Manson
Pete Rose
Timothy McVeigh

and for #10 possibly Henry Blackmun, Jane Fonda, Noam Chomsky, Lee Harvey Oswald, or even Benedict Arnold.

My criteria are:
the most outstanding individual ...
in a distinct sphere of society ...
whose enduring legacy was to betray American institutions or ideals ...
to the point of their fatal endangerment.

Happy New Year.

[elliot]

My list is at From Where I sit.

I wonder how many other people have Harry Blackmun and Sam Walton on their lists?

[Brian]

Here's my attempt -- I used a chronological setup like the Brits, but I used 20 year periods because we don't have that many centuries worth of history:

1980-2000 - Lee Atwater
1960-1980 - Richard Nixon
1940-1960 - Joseph McCarthy
1920-1940 - A. Mitchell Palmer
1900-1920 - Woodrow Wilson
1880-1900 J.D. Rockefeller
1860-1880 Robert E. Lee
1840-1860 James Polk
1820-1840 Lazarus Morel
1800-1820 John Adams

The list is heavy on politics and presidents, because what else do I know about US history? I was able to sneak in "The Dread Redeemer, Lazarus Morel" from Jorge Luis Borges' A Universal History of Infamy, though.

[Francis McNulty]

1. Ted Kennedy only principle he knows is the interest on his fathers bootleg profits.
2. Pat Buchannan ran with communist as vp, so anti free trade it actually cost American jobs
3. ACLU will defend free speech unless you are a conservatve on a collage campus,
4. ENRON people are there to be screwed
4. FDR - unwarranted detention of American citizens, 100K plus
5. Bill Clinton ( fortunately an inconsequential figure in history )
6. John Sunnunu sic? solely for Justice D Souter
7. Any American who supported slaveery, Jim Crow or seperate but equal
8. LBJ - no balls for winning Vietnam, poverty was decreasing in USA until "War on Poverty"
9. G Wallace
10. Archbishop of Boston who covered massive sex scandel.

[Anthony Easton]

there is no evidence what so ever that kinsey fucked kids, and reporting isnt giving persmission.

[Bob]

Top 10 Worst Americans? Here's my picks...

10. Michael Moore - Leftist propagandist of the highest order...America's own Leni Riefenstahl.

9. Alfred Kinsey - Pervert child molester who sexually abused and destroyed the lives of countless children in the name of "research." Issues a report that is a shotgun blast rationalization of the sickest behavior of the oddest fringe of society.

8. Neville Chamberlin - founder of the American Church of Appeasement. Spineless twit who helped inspire a generation of cowards.

7. Noam Chomsky - A Leftist Elistist Academic version of the Herpes virus...just won't go away.

6. The Rosenbergs - (I'll give you a two-for-one deal on these jerks) Traitors...what else is there to say.

5. Richard Gephardt - Introduced America to the notion that successful people are "winners of life's lottery."

4. LBJ - The Great Society...aka The Great Shakedown.

3. FDR - Set up the machinery by which generations of Americans would suffer the "death of a thousand cuts"...payroll withholding. The means by which the government can rob you blind a penny at a time without you really feeling it.

2. John Kerry - Faux war hero who bears a creepy resemblence to Gomer Pyle when he is in his Navy Bravos.

1. Bill Clinton - Took class warfare, slick BS, propaganda, and outright lying to a whole new level.

[huski]

Steven,

Carson and Rifkin are arguable, I guess...I'm curious about the relative effects on mosquitos of DDT vs. draining wetlands. For Rifkin, I agree that he's a Luddite and annoying, but a) was he leading or following the EU anti-GMO crowd? and b) for all their potential, GMOs are probably not limiting wrt famines and mass starvation. Politics and war is.

For someone in public health who may fit the profile, I might nominate Peter Duesberg, the Berkeley virologist and National Academy member who has led the HIV-AIDs denial movement. This has had some pretty awful influence on the rejection of conventional AIDS prevention/treatment measures in Africa, I believe. I left him off my own list, as I restricted my choices to the nonliving.

I think I'm the only one to include Franklin Pierce, so far.

[Steven Den Beste]

No one here seems to have chosen my two "favorites":

1. Rachel Carson. She has the distinction of being responsible (IMHO) for more premature deaths than any other American. More than Hitler, more even than Stalin. Because of her book Silent Spring, DDT was banned world wide leading to a drastic increase in yearly malaria deaths which continues to this day.

Malaria causes 1.85 million deaths per year now, mostly in Africa, and the majority of those are children. It used to be even more. The majority of those could have been prevented by DDT.

2. Jeremy Rifkin. No single person has done more to prevent modern technology from improving the lives of the people of the world. Rifkin is a one-man Luddite revolution. He's had his greatest success in Europe where they've heeded him and banned virtually all genetically modified foods. It's not just that they refuse to grow them there; they also refuse to import them. As a result, many third world nations, especially in Africa, refuse to grow them as well because doing so would lose them the possibility of exporting foodstuffs to Europe during good growing years.

Which means that in bad growing years they've faced widespread famine and mass starvation which could have been prevented by GMOs. Worse, they have refused to permit importation of GM grain from the US during those famines to feed their own starving people, out of fear that some of the grain would "escape" and be planted.

[Anthony Easton]

Excuse the Lenghth

1. J Edgar Hoover
The ultimate self hating queer, the destruction and paranoia that slit any of the American core values that might have existed, his paranoia of communism made generations of genuinely progressive folks withered. Add to this his racism, his homophobia, his misogyny and his seeking to make every man, woman and child fall under a kind of eugenic whiteness.
2. Richard Nixon The closest thing that America ever got to Richard the Third, his biggest crimes were not the ones he had to resign for (ie the Break in) but for the desperate re-centering of the Executive Branch, and also this genuine belief that lying to the American people was not only right but necessary. He is why America refuses its leaders.
3. Nathan Bedford Forrest He founded the Ku Klux Klan.
4. Francis Fukuyama Not only responsible for the idiotic book The End of History, which is as amusing to read as any utopia, and as dangerous (ask London, Bali, New York, Iraq, Delhi or Barcelona if history had ended). He also helped found the agit-prop wing of the hard neo-cons. The project has been more responsible for spreading the poisonous bromide that free markets=free people, for the continued disavowal of the third world, for getting America into the next Vietnam, and really desperately misunderstanding the plurality of Islamic voices.
5. George Custer The logical extension of the genocidal, and incompetent internal policies of the American government against the first nations people , and one of any number examples I can use of the misguided, and fundamentally evil policy of Manifest Destiny.
6. Jeffery Amherst Small Pox Ridden Blankets, one of the first examples of biological warfare.
7. Father Caughlin The abuse this man, made of the words of Christ, the fascism, the demagoguery, the fear of immigrants and wrapping patriotism into the true cross—responsible for every single example of jesus loves America ever since.
8. Leo Strauss A dishonest motherfucker. The best example of the abuses of the Eurocentric the best example of technocratic speech used to obfuscate on purpose (all those right wingers who hate Derrida, would do well to pay attention to this mans politics of language) His cult of worship in the American academies, relates to a genuine fear of pleasure, sexuality, and the vox populi, as evidenced by the boring and self centered Alan Bloom.
9. Dick Cheney The puppet master, responsible for the theory work behind Nixon’s egomania, Regan’s monomania, the cold bureaucratic steel of Bush the First, and bringing Bush II to power. Excellent at weaseling.
10. Anslinger The war against some drugs began as an attempt to destroy African American and Hispanic citizens, and ended with shotgunning any of the more important amendments in the Constitution. I can’t believe this was an accident.

[OrangeEnt]

Wow, I too decided to create my list before reading the others. It's amazing that I had so many that others chose. Benedict Arnold (who wouldn't say him?); John D Rockefeller; Boss Tweed; The Rosenbergs; and the Monstrous One. The rest of my list can be read at Ahshoot

[Buddy Larsen]

Odd how few mention Bill Clinton--the "quintessential American"--as all presidents are to the world--who very nearly handed the planet off to a global crime-syndicate which had usurped the UN under his tutelege (or at best his fond neglect) while occupying himself with filling all media channels with messages to the world's young people, involving the meaning of "is" (meaning itself), 'what's a lie, anyway?', and 'there is no right-and-wrong, only caught-or-not', and of course the wonderful under-the-oval-office-desk meditations (with a young person, and to young folks everywhere) on essential human nature as seen from the meat side of life.

[john morrissey]

1.Norman Lear founder of People for the American Way and supporter of all left wing causes.
2.Walter Durant NY Times writer who won Pulitzer for describing the Soviet Union as paradise on earth after personally witnessing the atrocities and murders of thousands by Lenin and Stalin.
3.Dr Armand Hammer,founder of Occidental Petroleum on money secretly paid to him by Stalin for acting as a soviet agent passingfunds to US Communists for espionage activities for over forty years as revealed by the Venona intercepts.And also for hiring Al Gore senior as his lobbyist after the elder Gore was defeated in the Senate.
4.Anyone connected with the ACLU.
5.Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger.
6.Tom Clarke ,left wing atty Genl and Supreme Ct justice under Harry Truman,and father of the left tilted marshmallow Ramsay Clarke.
7.Michael Moore
8.Jane Fonda
9.Jimmy Carter for all the damage he has done to the free world everywhere he goes .He is the Typhoid Mary of tyranny.
10.Warren Christopher for spreading the slander that G Bush sr had carried out secret negotiatins in Paris to get the Ayatollahs to hold the hostages long enough to win the election for Ronald Reagan,and for setting the conditions in the middle east that led to our current problems.

[chris Muir]

#1-Bill Clinton-turned the Presidential office into a whorehouse, special favors department for China, the list goes on and on...

#2-Hillary Clinton-Anti-Human power-obsessed Harpy intent on remaking people to suit her needs.

#3-Trent Lott-Opportunist for himself only.

#4-MSM-propaganda arm for leftists

#5-George Bush the Elder-Opportunist for himself only.

#6-Jimmy Carter-Pathetic Human Being

#7-Jacques Chirac-Enabler Extraordinaire

#8-Schroeder-see above

#9-Randy Cunningham-Sold himself and his service down the pike

#10-Oprah-Mass Distraction and Propaganda for anti-male diatribes

[Ordinary Everday Christian]

Excellent idea that has really gotten people thinking. I'll submit my modest contribution, originally posted here

10. Madalyn Murray O'Hair, atheist
9. Hugh Hefner, pornographer
8. Roger Baldwin (ACLU founder)
7. Warren G. Harding, crooked President
6. James Buchanan, spineless President
5. Jimmy Carter, incompetent President
4. Lyndon Baines Johnson, incompetent President
3. J. Edgar Hoover, cross-dressing thug
2. Roger B. Taney, pro-slavery Chief Justice
1. Harry Blackmun, pro-Abortion Assoc. Justice

[ahem]

5) Tokyo Rose: American propagandist for Japan during WWII.

Are fictional people allowed?

[Jeremiah]

Others have already listed several of my choices, whose demerits I can hardly elaborate further: John Wilkes Booth, Paul Robeson, Alger Hiss, Timothy McVeigh.

To these let me add:

Lillian Hellman - a "limousine Stalinist" whose literary reputation spiked at the end of her career with the publication two memoirs (Scoundrel Time, Pentimento), one of which rationalized protecting American Communists and the other which inspired the Vanessa Redgrave/Jane Fonda cliche-ridden movie "Julia." As for Ms. Hellman's authorial reliability, look up Mary McCarthy's splendid remark about her use of the words "and" and "the."

Charles Manson - So many individuals took wrong turns in "the Sixties", but few of that era's signature personalities embodied evil with the concentration Manson did, and to this day still does.

Pete Rose - Our professional athletes are entitled to be flawed - even tragically so - but this man's crumpled character (illegally gambling on his own team, then lying about it) in no way measures up to the lofty heights to which his athletic prowess once raised him. God bless Bart Giamatti for imposing on Rose a lifetime ban from America's pastime.

[Joshua]

The Donklephant blog (to which I am a semi-regular commentator) has taken up this challenge too. Well, sort of anyway. Actually, so far they've only been commenting on others' choices, but haven't weighed in themselves yet. However, I did post my ten nominees in their comments, and I will repeat them here (in rough chronological order) :

1) Benedict Arnold: Traitor of the Revolutionary War.
2) Jefferson Davis: Confederate president, who fought the bloodiest war in American history, for all intents and purposes, to preserve slavery.
3) Nathan Bedford Forrest: KKK founder; the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi of his day and place, and a stand-in for post-slavery racism activists in general on this list.
4) Carrie Nation: Early Prohibitionist activist and stand-in for that movement as a whole on this list; Prohibition’s greatest effect was to make organized criminals rich and powerful, and eventually into “role models” for today’s street gangs. (In other words, without Carrie Nation, we probably would never have heard of either Al Capone or "Tookie" Williams.)
5) Tokyo Rose: American propagandist for Japan during WWII.
6) J. Edgar Hoover: America's quintessential police-statist.
7) Joe McCarthy: Well-intentioned but hopelessly reckless in his methods, which served to simultaneously discredit anti-Communism and embolden the American Left, including...
8) Walter Duranty: The Left’s first high-profile cheerleader in America; without Duranty there’d probably be no “Hanoi Jane” Fonda, Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, political correctness, left-biased MSM, etc. and the Democratic Party would still be both powerful and respectable at the national level.
9) Richard Nixon: For reasons obvious (Watergate) and not so obvious (starting the modern “War on Drugs” with all that it entails).
10) Timothy McVeigh: American terrorist; helped carry out largest mass murder on U.S. soil before 9/11/2001.

[Joseph Marshall]

As I expected, Ed's list is superb: consistent, coherant, and thoroughly reasoned--by far the best I've seen. The most interesting thing to me is how little Ed is interested in the American evils that I find most prominent: the evils that were largely successful. The people on Ed's list made far less difference to the actual shape and destiny of America than mine.

My own critique of the more intelligent forms of Conservatism lies just here: its willingness to pretend that the largely succesful evils: slavery, flagrant and repeated trechery toward the Indian nations, and industrial or large landowner oppression of small freeholders or unorganzed labor, either weren't evil, didn't exist, or weren't important.

They were. And they still make up the fabric of who we are. For better or worse they stain the name and shape the prospects of every American.

[Alexandra]

Practically the entire Bush Administration Ken? How unimaginative....

[Ken C.]

1. Antonin Scalia. The mostest activist judge of all.

2. Richard Mellon Scaife. Has bought the largest collection of propaganda mills and media whores the world has ever seen.

3. Karl Rove. Relentless dirty campaigning in pursuit of power and money, for the sole purpose of obtaining more power and money.

4. Dick Cheney. Lying his country into war, corruption, torture, spying on his fellow citizens, claiming the right to seize citizens on American soil and hold them indefinitely without trial. Getting close to bin Laden with respect to causing the senseless violent deaths of Americans. Way ahead in maiming, though.

5. George Bush. Cheney's puppet, has violated his sacred oath of office multiple times. Katrina is just the tip of his incompetence iceberg. The most unAmerican president since Jefferson Davis.

6. Tom Delay. Working hard to destroy the two-party system through massive corruption.

7. Donald Rumsfeld. When it comes time to badly execute a horrible idea, Rummy is your man.

8. Jefferson Davis. Treason in support of slavery.

9. Joe McCarthy. Until Cheney, the worst American demagogue.

10. Sun-Myung Moon. Not a citizen, but the self-crowned emperor, as abetted by Republicans in the halls of Congress. Pours $40 million/year down the Washington Times drain, to lie to Americans.

[Gahrie]

I posted mine on my blog. I have Jimmy Carter, Jane Fonda, George Soros and Benedict Arnold on my list also. There seems to be a consensus forming about them.