18 comments

  1. Years ago. Jeeze is it really 18 years back? Yep. 2008 at one of the gun-blogger meetups in Indianapolis, Mike Farrell (Mr. Breda Fallacy) asked me who my three favorite Founding Fathers were. I saw the answer as being a list of archetypes, rather than specific individuals. I nominated Ben Franklin, Sam Adams, and John Hancock — The Entrepreneur, the FIrebrand, and the Smuggler, those being the archetypal American Heroes (In the Greek sense of the term Hero).

  3. Thomas Sowell belongs on the Intellectual line.

    It is interesting that the leftists haven’t started publicly sniping at Dolly’s memory yet.

    1. Sowell was one of my first thoughts, too. He certainly belongs in that company.
      Wouldn’t it be interesting if sainthood for Dolly is the rock on which the culture finally breaks and the long suppressed immune system of civilization starts to work again.

  4. Modern day Intellectual – Kim du Toit. – reading this website daily helps me realize there are still sane people in a world full of insane morons.

    Also modern day intellectual – Ronald Reagan.

    Respected – Gregory Bovino

  5. I would tend to agree. I think of the three choices Thomas Jefferson was the smartest of the group. Definitely driven.

    That group created something that was awesome. Now if we do not throw it away.

  6. Three excellent responses. Some other suggestions for consideration.

    Respected: Billy Graham, Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln
    Intellectual: Einstein (he became an American citizen), Thomas Edison
    Beloved: Bob Hope, Walt Disney

    Does MLK make the list?

  7. Admire: Calvin Coolidge—we need a hell of a lot more like him. An American Cincinnatus. George Washington–its impossible to state how much the country owes him, from founding, to leaving when it was time.

    Respect: Ronald Reagan, Helen Chenoweth, Barry Goldwater, Thomas Sowell

    I like that someone included Walt Disney. I would not include the Walt Disney Company.

    People I miss: PJ O’Rourke, Walter Williams, Charlie Daniels, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Clancy (when he actually wrote books, not put his name on ghostwritten claptrap).

    Tom Brokaw was wrong calling WWII people the Greatest Generation, it was the Founding Fathers who were the greatest. No slight on the WWII people.

    People we would have been better off without: Any Feminist, Woodrow WIlson, FDR, LBJ, Teddy Roosevelt, any activist giving themselves an “african” name. Liberal Clergy, Kathleen Kennedy, God almighty where to stop.

    And I guess the greatest American I miss the most, is my Dad. 7 years on.

      1. In some order:

        1. The start of the belief that the U.S. should be an interventionist power globally.

        2. The fact that he split the Republican ticket and gave us Woodrow Fucking Wilson

        3. Pushing the .gov to become property owners, thereby tying up hundreds of thousands of acres out West into .gov controlled lands.

        He at least did put his body on the line in an intervetionist war, which is more than I can say for someone like Lindsay Graham.

      2. Perhaps the man could have qualified in all three of Kim’s categories:
        Respected – he put his life on the line in Cuba, earning the Medal of Honor, and was awarded the Nobel Peace prize for negotiating the end of the Russo Japanese War.
        He took over a failed Panama Canal effort from the French and ramrodded it through.
        The Canal alone should be a monument to the man.
        No one doubted his courage. Before his military foray into Cuba, as a sickly child, he drove himself to become a competitive boxer and a practitioner of jiu jitsu. He also channeled the grief of losing his mother and wife on the same night into a successful ranching business.

        Intellectual – he read in six languages, authored 36 books, two of which are still standards in their fields, could name title and author of the 125 books per year he read while president. As of a few years ago, the USNA still used his Naval War of 1812 as a textbook, which he wrote while still in law school.

        Beloved – The common man loved him for ensuring safer food and medicine, advocating for workers’ rights, resulting in better working conditions and fair labor practices.
        In spite of his supercharged life, he was a wonderful family man, overcoming the loss of his wife and mother during the same night to become both a loving husband to his second wife and a doting father to his children.

        However, my admiration for the man’s physical and intellectual capabilities, energy, leadership abilities and courage, is diminished by his letting his overweening ego found Progressivism, and as preussenotto said, he split the Republican ticket in 1912 to give us Woodrow Fucking Wilson ->WWI->FDR->WWII and the progressivism that plagues us yet today in the USA.
        The goddamned communists fuck up everything. I hate them.

        2. And the statement “The goddamned communists fuck up everything” should have been item # 11 on the stone tablets Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai.

  8. All three of those categories can be evaluated both in terms of how they were perceived in their time and how they might be perceived now, because we now have massively more means of communicating knowledge and the propaganda of public relations that did not exist for most of our history. Then too, are we talking in terms of the public, or the evaluations of knowledgeable students of history?
    That said:
    Respected –
    George Washington for sure, although recent revisionists would like to undo that because slaves. If you examine census records from about 1850 until 1910, you would be stunned how many males are named George W. “Doe,” the “W” being for Washington. My great grandfather was one of them.

    Abraham Lincoln, for sure, even though he was vilified by many in his time, yet millions turned out for his
    funeral train and a massive monument to him stands in DC.
    George C. Marshall
    I doubt most Americans now would even know his name, but historians would put him on this list. During WWI, he was promoted over many senior officers to become General Pershing’s Chief of Staff, building an army from 200,000 to 2,000,000 in just 18 months for the victorious AEF, then promoted again over dozens of more senior generals by FDR to lead victorious American armed forces through WWII, then served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under Truman. Winston Churchill lauded Marshall as the “organizer of victory” for his leadership of the Allied victory in World War II. As Secretary of State, he formulated the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe post war. In recognition of this work, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953, the only Army general ever to receive the honor.

    Intellectual – Given the different realms of fields of study and knowledge, I think this one would have to be divided into categories, much like Nobel Prizes
    I would add to Kim’s three
    John Quincy Adams
    fluent in seven languages, educated in America, France, Netherlands, translated Greek and Latin classics in his youth, was second in class at Harvard, was minister or ambassador to Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, negotiated the treaty to end the War of 1812, served as US Senator, Representative, and President, organized the cession of Florida to the US, was instrumental in formulating the Monroe doctrine.
    Thomas Edison
    Although many argue his staff, not him, were the inventors, it was his relentless drive and vision that made them happen.
    Linus Pauling
    Robert Oppenheimer, and many of his staff on the Manhattan Project
    Albert Einstein
    Jonas Salk
    Tough choices here.

    Beloved – depends heavily on when
    today – hard to top Dolly Parton
    50-60’s Walt Disney
    30’s-40’s FDR. I think he was a conniving Socialist, but in his lifetime, he was revered and beloved by most Americans. Just look at the tears in the crowds at his funeral
    1780-1850 George Washington beyond all doubt.

  10. Most Respected: Washington, Mark Twain. I’d like to put some entrepreneurs on the list but then we get into the Robber Barons vs Captains of Industry debate. Even modern ones like Gates, Musk, Buffet are prone to controversy and rightly so.

    Intellectual: Franklin, Sam Adams and James Madison. Gotta figure away to make Tom Jefferson into the top three for writing the world’s best breakup letter. Madison largely wrote our current constitution. Also the authors of the Federalist and anti Federalists should be kept in mind for runners up. Thomas Sowell has to make an appearance in this list as does Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises and Fredrich Hayek. although I don’t think the last two were American. William Buckley Jr should be on the radar as well. Barry Goldwater should be on the list too.

    Beloved: Paul Revere, his subsequent courts martial is largely forgotten by the current citizenry. Longfellow’s poem made him famous. Tom Hanks has lost his shine recently. How about Jimmy Stewart? Air Force pilot, talented actor, haven’t heard anyone criticize him. MLK Jr had some great ideas like judging a person by their character rather than the color of their skin. Sure he had flaws but everyone has flaws. George Marshal as mentioned above certainly deserves more accolades and recognition than he has received. I cannot put FDR or Wilson on this list at all. FDR expanded government far too much. While some of his work was overturned by the Supreme Court, too much of it exists today. Wilson brought in the Federal Reserve which is an unaccountable mess.

Comments are closed.