As apo at unfogged notes, a poll of conservative bloggers answers the burning question, Who is American history’s greatest monster? Oddly, there’s not a conservative blogger on the list! Really, it’s sad how boring and predictable the results are, with FDR, Barack Obama, and Jimmy Carter occupying the top spots. Still, credit where credit is due: Saul Alinsky? Not bad, conservative bloggers. You surprise me with your latent antisemitism attention to detail! Then there’s Woodrow Wilson. Wait, what? Woodrow Wilson? Because of internationalism, I guess. But where’s Eugene Debs? Or Big Bill Haywood? Or any of the big-government-loving Federalists? These bloggers have no sense of history, I tell you.
It probably goes without saying that if we were to use some sort of inverse felicific calculus — to find the person responsible for visiting the greatest harm on the greatest number of people in the nation’s history — I’d offer pride of place to one of the Andrews, Johnson or Jackson, atop my list. Or maybe Roger Taney.
The Edge of the American West 
58 comments
August 13, 2010 at 2:31 pm
SEK
C’mon, Ari! Carter was easily more evil than that bin Laden guy.
August 13, 2010 at 2:38 pm
ari
Look, they think that Lincoln’s better than FDR, so they can’t be all bad.
August 13, 2010 at 2:39 pm
ari
And when did the comments change? It really is true that you can’t go home again.
August 13, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Ben Alpers
Alinsky’s doubly surprising. First, who’d have thought they’d have heard of him. Second, the leaders of the Tea Party movement have openly credited Rules for Radicals with providing them with tactical advice, especially during last summer’s Town Hall meetings on HCR.
My guess is that the Alinsky answer is an odd leftover from the days when Hillary Clinton was the likely Democratic Presidential nominee and herself a strong candidate for History’s Greatest Monster (remember: she was in the original subtitle of Liberal Fascism).
Clinton’s senior thesis at Wellesley was on none other than Alinsky, who was, in anticipation of a Clinton nomination, being set up to play the role eventually played by Bill Ayers in the GOP’s anti-Obama campaign.
August 13, 2010 at 3:09 pm
eric
For sheer volume of avoidable harm done, Andrew Johnson is a winner. I’m ignoring the second comment here in the interest of not overwhelming this thread with the many, many ways in which FDR pwns Lincoln.
August 13, 2010 at 3:14 pm
eric
I’m actually kind of shocked that Earl Warren didn’t make the right-wing list. Sic transit gloria mundi.
August 13, 2010 at 3:17 pm
ari
I’m ignoring the second comment here in the interest of not overwhelming this thread with the many, many ways in which FDR pwns Lincoln.
I post something, and this is the thanks I get?
August 13, 2010 at 3:18 pm
eric
Hey, at least I comment on your posts.
August 13, 2010 at 3:18 pm
califury
Went to the poll site and read their discussion thread. Amazing.
August 13, 2010 at 4:21 pm
dana
I suspect they dislike Carter because when he talks about Christian faith, he means eradicating the guinea worm and building houses, and when they talk about Christianity to their base, they mean starting wars in the name of the Almighty Dollar.
August 13, 2010 at 4:52 pm
Jason B.
First, who’d have thought they’d have heard of him.
Alinsky’s all the wingnuts could yelp about after someone about a year ago made a connection through Obama’s organizing connections to earlier Alinsky associations.
Since nobody I talked to who was concerned had ever read Rules for Radicals, I couldn’t imagine what they were worried about.
August 13, 2010 at 4:59 pm
NM
Here’s a fun game: imagine possible worlds where one of the top 25 really were the Worst American Ever. It’s really weird to think about, esp. with some of the low impact people (Al Sharpton?!).
August 13, 2010 at 5:12 pm
kathy a.
you really have to wonder about the polling pool, when carter comes up as the worst monster. in history! was it the time he admitted sometimes having unclean thoughts? or is it all that do-good stuff — building houses for poor people, thinking that countries shouldn’t bomb the hell out of each other before talking, etc.?
August 13, 2010 at 5:27 pm
kathy a.
also — there are over 3200 people currently on death rows across the country, all of whom are presumably the “worst of the worst.” nobody mentioned anyone still residing on the row. mcveigh, the rosenbergs, john wilkes booth, and benedict arnold are long gone. osama bin laden, by the way, didn’t even make the list…
August 13, 2010 at 5:29 pm
ben
Presumably “in American history” carries with it the qualification “Americans”. Everyone on the list is one, anyway.
August 13, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Levi Stahl
Put me down firmly in the Andrew Johnson camp. If we could pin the Civil War itself to a single person, that person would run away with the contest, but since the blame for that is multipersonal and multigenerational, AJ’s the best we can do.
August 13, 2010 at 5:33 pm
sven
I wish the total absence of anyone related to the civil war were either shocking or surprising…
Actually, I am surprised the list of ‘Worstest Americans Ever’ doesn’t include a single foreigner; not even Keynes or Paul McCartney!
August 13, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Rob_in_Hawaii
Somewhere in the cosmos the ghost of Emma Goldman is furious. Furious, I tell you, in being left off the list.
August 13, 2010 at 5:36 pm
sven
13) Jane Fonda, …
and no PAUL KRUGMAN?
He must be very disappointed!
August 13, 2010 at 6:15 pm
politicalfootball
AJ’s the best we can do.
Surely we must give props to Buchanan here.
August 13, 2010 at 6:26 pm
politicalfootball
Wikipedia has a fun piece on the ratings of presidents. Seems like this must have been linked here at some point before, but I hadn’t seen it.
August 13, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Robin Marie
I am surprised Carter is at the top of the list; I thought he was viewed as too incompetent to really present much of a threat.
August 13, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Doctor Science
Seriously, does anyone have any clue how Carter, of all people, got to the top of that list? Looking through the comments gives me no idea, none.
Or is it just that he was defeated by Saint Ronnie, so therefor he must have been a horrible monster? Baffling.
August 13, 2010 at 7:58 pm
ari
1) His handling of the hostage crisis is still seen as a great failure of leadership by many people on the right. If only he had stood toe-to-toe with the Ayatollah and then begun bombing/invaded Iran everything would be better for everybody (except, probably, for the dead hostages — but hey, they’d be martyrs to the cause of American power). Or so the argument goes.
2) He was mean, in public, to George W. Bush.
3) Israel.
4) He helps poor people, including poor, brown people.
5) Israel.
6) Rather than chanting “Drill Baby, Drill!” like any responsible American leader should, he had the gall to wear a sweater on tv and to ask people to lower their thermostats.
7) Israel.
8) He’s an embarassingly good evangelical Christian.
9) Profit.
August 13, 2010 at 9:17 pm
davenoon
I’m just glad to know that Al Sharpton is worse than every Confederate who ever lived.
August 13, 2010 at 9:26 pm
ari
Priorities, dave. Al Sharpton is fat.
August 13, 2010 at 9:38 pm
McDevite
Ari, isn’t the other thing the real problem, not the fat thing–that he’s not grateful to be an American, rather than be some witchdoctor back in Africa. He’s “Harlem Flim-flam” artist Al Sharton!
August 13, 2010 at 10:57 pm
JPool
“Seriously, does anyone have any clue how Carter, of all people, got to the top of that list?”
Conservative bloggers are apparently hipper, or at least bigger Simpsons fans than one might normal expect.
Other clever picks: Timothy McVeigh is a nice bit of turn-around, and Margaret Sanger gives them the twofer of appearing to be (strategically) anti-racist while pushing the anti-choice agenda.
Ari, would Roger Taney be better played in the movie by Sam Waterson or Alan Rickman?
August 13, 2010 at 11:00 pm
JP Stormcrow
Presumably “in American history” carries with it the qualification “Americans”. Everyone on the list is one, anyway.
Well … Obama.
August 13, 2010 at 11:22 pm
undergrad
No Thurgood Marshall?
August 13, 2010 at 11:26 pm
undergrad
“No Thurgood Marshall?”
Meaning, I am shocked that he didn’t make the conservative list for his “the Constitution as a living document” remark.
August 14, 2010 at 2:19 am
NM
Al Sharpton has lost a lot of weight. I think that’s his way of taunting America.
August 14, 2010 at 4:35 am
elizardbreath
Here’s a fun game: imagine possible worlds where one of the top 25 really were the Worst American Ever.
I had that same thought — if those were really the worst people ever, man, would this ever be a delightful country with no real problems.
August 14, 2010 at 5:28 am
rea
The reason Carter is on top of the list is that the Simpsons exerts a powerful influence on American culture, even for those on the right. Of course Carter is History’s Greatest Monster!
August 14, 2010 at 5:33 am
rea
“if those were really the worst people ever, man, would this ever be a delightful country with no real problems”
I don’t know–some of the traitors and mass murders on the list–people like Ames, McVeigh, Arnold, Booth and Nixon–rank high on any objective list of high profile evil Americans.
August 14, 2010 at 6:48 am
jhm
I’d at least put Mr. Harry J. Anslinger up for honorable mention.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger
August 14, 2010 at 6:54 am
SeanH
rea: I mean, obviously Booth was an asshole and murdered the nth* best President evar, but was the magnitude of his negative effect on American society really greater than, say, Ayn Rand? How much did Booth shift the course of history onto a darker path?
*I forget where we’re putting Lincoln.
August 14, 2010 at 7:25 am
Levi Stahl
First in war, first in peace, and first in the rankings of presidents, says I. Of course, we didn’t get to see how he’d handle that whole “peace” thing, did we?
Oh, and I’d like to nominate Nathan Bedford Forrest as at least a mascot or aide-de-camp to History’s Greatest Monster. Can I have a second?
August 14, 2010 at 10:57 am
CharleyCarp
Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott was awful, certainly. I don’t see how one can really argue for much in the way of significance of the decision in adding to human suffering. It’s not like the result, if he’d voted the other way, would have been abolition. First, he’d have been a dissenter, but even if he was able to bring a couple guys along, it would still only go so far as to establish an American version of ‘Stadtluft macht frei’ — not that much impact on your plantation slave.
His opinion in Merryman on the other hand, was pretty good. (Even St. Abraham is subject to the law). Not that it had even as much impact as DS.
August 14, 2010 at 11:29 am
amit
Also, people seem to have forgotten pearl harbour. Michael Bay has a lot to answer for.
August 14, 2010 at 11:34 am
wayne fontes
I suspect they dislike Carter because when he talks about Christian faith, he means eradicating the guinea worm and building houses, and when they talk about Christianity to their base, they mean starting wars in the name of the Almighty Dollar.
Wow Dana. Can you support that comment with one single example?
August 14, 2010 at 11:43 am
CharleyCarp
As I’ve already noted at The U, they hate Carter because he Blamed America First.
August 14, 2010 at 1:09 pm
dana
Can you support that comment with one single example?
It’s just a theory to explain why they think a guy who has spent the past 30 years being a humanitarian in lots of explicitly non-partisan ways should beat out McVeigh and the entire Confederacy.
In quite a lot of places, to be a good Christian means to be a good Republican, and that means signing up for all of the culture war and clash of civilizations stuff, drilling, along with whatever wars the Republicans want to get up to. Carter’s faith, which is nominally what they believe, leads him to build houses, help the poor, and try for peace and eradicate diseases. I have to think that’s got to sting a little bit.
I could be wrong. Perhaps they really are taking their intellectual cues from the Simpsons.
August 14, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Charlieford
“Can you support that comment with one single example?”
“God is pro-war”
By Rev. Jerry Falwell
Posted: January 31, 2004
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36859
August 14, 2010 at 1:50 pm
wayne fontes
Your theory stated the Christians supported starting wars for an economic reasons. you response doesn’t even attempt to address that.
I understand the stereotype you have in mind but within the Republican party it’s a minority that does little to explain how Carter ends up on a list of the 25 worst Americans.
August 14, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Levi Stahl
Okay, having just finished watching the Cardinals lose to the Cubs on Fox’s Game of the Week, I have to change my vote: Tim McCarver is history’s greatest monster, hands down.
August 14, 2010 at 5:13 pm
BP in MN
Levi Stahl is crazy. Tim McCarver isn’t even the greatest monster in the FOX booth! Have we forgotten Joe Buck so quickly?
August 14, 2010 at 5:36 pm
SeanH
Worst Americans not on the list: Ayn Rand? J. Edgar Hoover? Joe McCarthy? Andrew Jackson?
August 14, 2010 at 7:02 pm
Charlieford
How about Mark Farner?
August 14, 2010 at 10:25 pm
CharleyCarp
Here’s the thing on Jimmy Carter: it’s not just that he shows them up on actual Christian Christianity. It’s that the Cold War only came to a successful conclusion when Reagan realized that Carter (and Nixon) were right, and that he’d been wrong.
That’s right, you heard me: Liberalism won the Cold War.
Reagan didn’t tell Gorbachev at Reykjavik that he better play ball or we’d wipe him out. He didn’t leave the thing talking about evil empires and how they had to be defeated. He left with ‘Why can’t we all get along?’ And then his authority unraveled enough, due to Iran Contra, that the various macho factions had to sit and watch, from the sidelines, as the Soviet Union slowly unwound. And did the unwinding involve military defeat? No, it did not. It did, however, include substantial welfare payments to the SU — and paying Russian soldiers to be out of Germany is a lot like paying farmers not to grow wheat.
August 15, 2010 at 7:43 am
kevin
“Can you support that comment with one single example?”
“Robertson: Iraq war fought with Christian principle”
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_2003_04_15_pat_robertson.shtml
August 15, 2010 at 7:45 am
kevin
How about Mark Farner?
“Nobody knows the band Grand Funk? Mark Farner’s wild, shirtless lyrics? The bong-rattling bass of Mel Schacher? The competent drumwork of Don Brewer?”
August 15, 2010 at 11:35 am
Charlieford
“Your theory stated the Christians supported starting wars for an economic reasons. you response doesn’t even attempt to address that.”
Wayne has a bit of a point. Christians are no more likely than other Americans to explicitly advocate for wars on the grounds that they’re economically beneficial. They respond to moral arguments.
George H. W. Bush found this out in 1990. The first rationale for the Gulf War had to do with the price of oil. Everyone said, Huh? We’re going to be killing people to keep the price of gasoline from rising?” So then it became a war to defend “the American way of life,” which was a little better–it could be interpreted anyway you wanted, from cheap gasoline, to the right of self-determination for Kuwaitis. But even that didn’t clinch it, so they pulled Dick Cheney out of a box to shout “Saddam has a bomb!”
The question is, to what degree do Americans, or especially Christians, sincerely believe that these moral arguments are determinative, and to what degree in their heart of hearts do they believe these more mundane interests are driving the whole thing?
August 15, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Andrew Roedell
Andrew Jackson promoted the extension of slavery, was the author of the forcible removal of Native Americans from their ancestral lands east of the Mississippi, and provided consistent moral support to expansionists like Pierce and Polk who were determined to wrest lands from Mexico. So, let’s see . . . ethnic cleansing, the preservation and extension of slavery, and cheerleading wars of foreign conquest: Any one of these should be enough to make a president notorious in the eyes of history, and Jackson accomplished all three.
August 15, 2010 at 7:04 pm
Charlieford
All of which together doesn’t begin to compare with this on the scale of abominations:
August 17, 2010 at 3:30 pm
bitchphd
Carter is clearly the worst because he is actually the best human being we’ve had in public office within our lifetimes. Therefore he is evil.
That and he desecrated the White House by putting solar panels on it. And he was right about our oil dependence. Clearly an evil, evil man.
August 23, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Dan'l Shays
What about Nullification? Doesn’t Jackson get off the very worst list for that? I mean, Lincoln hung a big portrait of him up in the Oval Office….
Also, General Jacob Smith, the guy who ordered the murder of everyone over ten in Samar in the Philippines, deserves to be on that list.
August 31, 2010 at 8:11 pm
JPool
Colin Danby, over at SEK’s place, indirectly explains Wilson’s place on the list.