Ten (or so) Worst Americans

Just recently, the BBC History magazine published a list of the 10 worst Britons in the past 1,000 years. The BBC refused to let history get shorted and selected 1 individual per century. The blog All Things Beautiful picked up on this concept and decided to create an American version. She has not posted hers yet but she has linked to a bunch of blogs who saw what she had in mind and decided to voice their own opinions. Because I’d rather not discuss the Bengals shameful performance of Saturday, I thought I would join the pack of lemmings and offer my own list.

In my list I’ve tried to remain as objective as possible, something that was completely lost on many of the blog posters. Most are filled with at least one or two very obvious political rants of our times. I’ve tried to give history an even say, but I must admit that my lack of intimate knowledge of the 19th century does bias this list towards the 20th. There are several people that I’ve seen pop up on other lists that I would give consideration to if I had room, such as Charles Manson and Aaron Burr, but I’ve tried to narrow the list to the worst of the worst, especially with either far reaching consequences or the sheer volume of their atrocities.

10) William Randolph Hearst – Most people would immediately question this selection. Yellow journalism certainly isn’t a good thing, but is it worth a position on this list? I believe it is. The process of creating a story from rumor or flat out lies directly led the US into war with Spain, costing a lot of American blood. It also cemented a point into the large newspaper barons that it didn’t really matter what the truth was. As long as they told a story convincingly enough, people would swallow it and the media could then dictate public policy. This ran through the entire 20th century from things like the two Red Scares, the Vietnam War, and even current attitudes about our government and its policies. Only recently with the proliferation of blogs and other sources have there been enough people digging to get all the information that people have been able to make decisions based on all the facts.

9) H. H. Holmes – Holmes was the first major American serial killer (at least that was caught). It is believed that he murdered over 200 people. His favorite method was through a hotel he ran in Chicago. He soundproofed certain rooms and would release gas into them during the night. He was a very sick individual and probably one of the most successful serial killers in the US.

8) Jane Fonda – Again, I am trying to leave politics out of this and leave the person’s actions to defend them. To many, Fonda remains a stanch anti-war activist and if that were the only thing she did, I wouldn’t even consider her for this list. However, she did not just oppose the government as many people did, she aided the enemy and was celebrated for it. Fonda set up foundations where people could donate money and have it be funneled to the North Vietnamese. She visited North Vietnam, inspecting and approving of equipment used against Americans. A famous story is told how she visited a POW camp and one soldier gave her a note with his information and asked that she give it to his family so that they may know where he was. She gave the note to a guard who then took the American prisoner away and was beaten. All wars have objectors and many wars have people working for the enemy, but Ms. Fonda has been celebrated and hailed as a hero for her actions that could and should have hanged less famous individuals. This celebration clouds the differences between opposition to combat (as practices by many law-abiding Americans during this time) and open support and aid to enemy (which is illegal under the Constitution). This confusion has had a disastrous effect on any practical debate where a person who opposes a war is called a traitor (see Michael Moore) and any person who supports a war is called a fascist war-monger (see Republican Party). This is why I believe Ms. Fonda’s actions push her above the fray and on to this list.

7) Jim Jones – Jones is probably the most famous of all the death cult leaders. Jones was a nut job of a preacher who created a massive following, swindling millions out of people. The government came after him and he transplanted himself and his church to Guyana. There, things went from bad to worse with beatings and rumored murders until he convinced his followers to die with him. 914 people died amidst one man’s madness, including 276 children, although Jones was found shot and not poisoned.

6) Julius and Ethel Rosenberg – There is much debate as to whether the Rosenbergs were Soviet spies prior to their delivering of nuclear secrets, but there is no doubt they did. In fairness, the Soviets had enough captured Germans that they would have figured it out eventually, but the material the Rosenbergs gave them certainly helped the case. Knowledge of nuclear weapons allowed the Soviets to rattle their saber just as loud as the Americans and also allowed them to be belligerent during the critical post-war clean up. At the very least, the Rosenbergs committed an act of high treason against the government and added fuel to a situation that eventually cost many American lives.

5) Eugene McCarthy – Despite what certain people’s convictions are about George W. Bush, it is McCarthy who pushed the US government to its closest embrace of dictatorship. McCarthy ruined many lives in his crowing and peacocking for the cameras. He trampled the rights of many Americans, most for certainly doing nothing more than holding opinions contrary to the mainstream. His creation of an atmosphere of fear and paranoia accelerated attacks not just on the cultural elite, but also in the masses. Modern versions of the Salem Witch Trials erupted throughout the country as anyone who uttered a leftist though could rightfully be charged with un-American activities and imprisoned. The specter of fear generated by McCarthy still lingers today, although we’ve changed the names from Communist to whatever the general bogeyman of the day is.

4) Franklin Pierce/James Buchanan – Both men are guilty of the same crime. Our 14th and 15th presidents were probably more responsible than just about anyone in history for allowing the events of the mid-19th century to descend into the Civil War. Pierce’s policies allowed direct confrontation between the two sides in Kansas. Any dialogue broke down and marauding bands on both sides attacked each other throughout the country. Buchanan came along and did nothing while he was in office, allowing things to further spiral out of control. The Civil War probably would have come at some point as the divisions were too great between the North and the South, however, the eight years over which these two men ruled were so full of incompetence and mismanagement that things were quickly brought to a head.

3) Jefferson Davis/Robert E. Lee – Davis is someone the Southerners will let me get by with, but a lot of people will get on me for attacking the patron saint of the South: Bobby Lee. No matter how good a commander or a man he was, he is still a traitor. People argue that he really wasn’t because he went with his “country” of Virginia. But Virginia was a member of the United States and Lee turned his back on it. Especially poignant is the fact that Lee was offered command of the Union armies and could have brought the Civil War to an end in less than a year. He might have been able to salvage the army that McDowell could not when things went array at First Manassas. But even beyond that, Lee and Davis were the two principles whom kept the war going as long as it did and continued to spill much innocent blood, to say nothing of keeping an entire race enslaved. The South’s beatification of Lee also obscures his role in history and trivializes the harm that he caused to the country. Even now, we may discuss openly the merits and faults of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant, but we may never dare breath that there might have been faults with Robert E. Lee and men like him.

2) Timothy McVey – Serial killers have come and gone, as have bizarre whack jobs. But no man has done more to murder fellow Americans and inspire fear than Timothy McVey. The mastermind and primary instrument of the Oklahoma City bombings McVey killed hundreds of people in a single moment, including many children. In my mind, no picture of that incident stands out more than of the firefighter holding the broken, bloodstained body of a child, maybe two years old. McVey never showed remorse or regret for his crime and the grand scale of his crime rifles him up to number 2 on this list.

1) Benedict Arnold – In the American lexicon, only two names are synonymous with treason: Judas and Benedict Arnold. Many people have committed treason and it is questionable to fully call it treason when one’s country is still more of an idea than a fact. However, the scale of what Arnold did is what propels him to the top. Benedict Arnold, prior to his treason was perhaps the greatest American hero at the time, second only to Washington. He captured Fort Ticonderoga; giving the Americans much needed heavy artillery. His delay tactics kept the British from advancing on New York in 1776 after the failed Quebec expedition. He almost single-handedly won the battle of Saratoga, destroying British hopes of reinforcement in the Northern colonies and convincing the French to enter the war on the American’s side. It has been said that if Arnold had died of his wounds that he received at Saratoga, he would be enshrined as one of the great heroes of America and we would sing psalms in his honor. Unfortunately, he turned for unknown reasons (although greed and love of a woman are the two most likely causes). The nature of his treason also damns him above all others. Arnold tried to give the British West Point. If he had succeeded, the British would have been in complete control of the Hudson River, allowing them to cut New England off from the other colonies and allowed the British to cut the Americans to pieces in smaller, easier portions. We well probably would have lost the war by 1782 or 1783 and the British would not have been generous when it came to dealing out terms and reparations. No man other than Arnold had such a means to destroy his country with a single stroke and for that reason we damn him as the worst American of all time.

You may disagree with my list and you are more than welcome to. My experiences and perceptions color my list as well as any other, but I’ve tried to be as objective as possible and hopefully you can see the merit of my argument if not fully agree with it.