The Ten Worst Americans

All Things Beautiful has challenged the blogosphere to come up with a list of the Ten Worst Americans. Captain’s Quarters is welcoming your comments on the issue.

I’m up to the challenge. I thought up the top 8 on my own and after a little more research, came up with the other two.

To understand my criteria for these choices, you need to understand this quote:

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.-attributed to Josef Stalin

You could fill a top ten list with a rogue’s gallery of murderers and traitors, yet their damage pails in comparison to that done by ennobled political leaders. It is my goal to focus on those who have done or attempted to do the worst damage to this country. That’s not to say Serial Killers don’t have a place on this list, they do. But it has to be kept in perspective. This isn’t a list of the Most Evil Americans, but rather the worst Americans.

Certainly, there’ve been some bad dudes in American History.

Some men were more anti-heroes than Villains. Think Andrew Jackson, George Wallace (who in his latter years repented of his segregationist ways in grand fashion), John Brown, and Michael Moore. Think of the three great compromisers: Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Calhoun. They made lives harder for those trying to protect runaway slaves, but also ended up averting Civil War for 10 years and guaranteeing a Northern victory. Most guys in the Civil War have to follow under the anti-hero category.

Some people are not worth a spot on the list. If I was making this list as a teenager, I’d have placed Bill Clinton on the list. However, history will recall him as an amoral twit.

Dishonorable Mentions

Senator Robert Byrd (D-Wv.) was a KKK recruiter, but gets a dishonorable mention for another reason, spending our nation into penury while fighting for his own self-aggrandizement in the State of West Virginia. Also, unlike other Democrats who argued in the Clinton Impeachment scandal that Clinton hadn’t committed high crimes and misdemeanors, Byrd concluded that Clinton had, but would vote to retain him in office anyway because he didn’t want to vote to remove him. Such is the stand of the Senate’s guardian of our Constitution.

Bull Connor was certainly a bad man and a racist, who used vicious tactics to suppress Civil Rights demonstrations, but his power and ability was more localized. There were also the murderers of Civil Rights leaders who are of prominence.

There was America’s most infamous environmental terrorist, the Unabomber. There’s those Americans who’ve been convicted of aiding our enemies in the War on Terror, such as John Walker Lindh. However, to paraphrase the Highlander, there can be only 10.

Below is my list:

10) Ted Bundy

Confessed to 30 murders, though some put the number as high as 100. Bundy’s multi-state coast-to-coast killing spree made him the prototypical American serial killer. Bundy reminds us that evil lurks in unexpected places. He was bright, intelligent, and involved in his community. Bundy so shocked people because he didn’t fit their picture of a serial killer. Bundy’s 1970s Murder spree was a clear statement that evil was among us and that it took on some unexpected forms.

9) H.H. Holmes

Another serial killer where we can just guess at the number of gruesome murders he committed, some experts place the number as high as 200. Some of his murders were “normal enough”. He murdered his boss and married his boss’ wife to take possession of the drug store. Murdered another man for his wife. Murdered a man for insurance money. However, he built himself a three story castle and rented out rooms during Chicago World’s Fair. Those visiting from other cities with no relatives in the area, meant untimely deaths inside his house of horrors as he would realse gas into their room and his soundproofing efforts assured no one could hear their screams. Holmes was America’s first serial killer, or at least the first one who was caught.

Jesse Jackson

Jackson is not the maniac either #10 or #9 were, but is guilty of something far worse. In 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot dead, leaving Jackson as the de facto leader of the Civil Rights movement. Jackson led initiatives have failed to revitalize inner cities. Poverty, misery, and ignorance still pervade 40 years after King, because instead of striving for change, Jackson has lived off the misery and suffering of African Americans. He’s made a living defending the hoodlums and bad actors in the Black Community who make life hard for decent people. He’s also sold his soul to the Democratic Party, backing out of pro-life convictions to make himself a palatable left winger for a president. He’s refused to represent the vast majority of Blacks who want a way out of failing public schools. Of course, one could argue Al Sharpton had done far worse in New York, yet Jackson had been entrusted with so much more. And to him whom much is given, much shall be required.

7. Aaron Burr

Burr is infamous for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Hamilton entered the duel with plans of avoiding death for both him and Burr, but it had been Burr’s bloodthirsty idea in the first place. Burr showed a view of political life, which if allowed to flourish would have made us nothing more than the great bloody empires of old.

Not that Burr would have minded. He planned to carve his own bloody empire out of what became the American Southwest, taking a large portion of the Louisiana Territory with him. Burr’s conspiracy failed, but the most frightening thing about him is that for 36 ballots in 1800, he stood tied with Thomas Jefferson in presidential balloting. I scarce think what our country would be like had he won.

6. Benedict Arnold

This was a no-brainer. Arnold is a challenging figure in the American Revolution. He was key in the American victory in the Saratoga Campaign which got the French to send weapons and men to help the Colonial cause. Arnold, however let his personal bitterness ruin him, as in the midst of war, he went into deep debt and at last planned to betray West Point to the British, thus allowing them to split the Colonies in two. Had Arnold succeeded. It would have been a devastating blow to the Revolutionary cause.

Arnold also gets on the listfor his activities after he fled West Point (courtesy of Wikipedia):

They made him a Brigadier General but only paid him some £6,000 sterling because his plot had failed. The British never really trusted him, although he saw some command in the American theater. In December, under orders from Clinton, Arnold led a force of 1,600 troops into Virginia and succeeded in capturing Richmond and cutting off the major artery of material to the southern patriot effort. In the Southern theater, Lord Cornwallis was able to march northwards towards Yorktown, which he moved into in May 1781. Arnold meanwhile had been sent north to capture the town of New London, Connecticut in hopes that it would divert Washington away from Cornwallis. While in Connecticut, his force captured Fort Griswold and murdered dozens of captured rebel soldiers on September 8. In December, Arnold was recalled to England with various other officers as the crown deemphasized the American theater over more probable wins in others.

Arnold’s goal in England was to convince imperial leaders to not give up the fight in spite of the loss of Cornwallis at Yorktown. While in London, he met with various cabinet officers and King George III to try to convince them to carry on the war effort. He was, as at Quebec, too late. The Crown was already sending peace feelers out to end the American conflict.

5) Tim McVeigh

Unlike, are first two mass murderers, McVeigh’s number of victims are known: 168. In 1995, he leveled the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing innocent men, women, and children to express his rage at the government.

Though he may not have known about the daycare on the ground floor of Federal Building, he showed no remorse at any of the deaths right up until the moment of his execution.

4) Henry Blackmun

If you like our nation’s current political climate, thank Henry Blackmun. With his finding in the Roe v. Wade decision, Blackmun took a jackhammer to the Separation of Powers in the Constitution and the 10th Amendment. The moment he delineated that not only should abortion be legal (thus overturning the democratically passed laws of 40 states), but also decided in what Trimesters abortion could be regulated, Blackmun became a legislator and the court became the Supreme Legislature of the Land.

Thus, a generation rose up feeling disconnected from their government and like their opinions didn’t matter. Anger at ill-gotten gains by the left soared while the left sought to hold on to the victories they’d won no matter illegitimate and undemocratic. If you don’t like the activists who run ads for and against Supreme Court Candidates like they’re running for Congress, thank Blackmun, he’s the one who crossed the Rubicon.

More to the point, Blackmun is responsible for the deaths of 40+ million unborn children through his Roe ruling. It has cheapened human life, created a culture of super predators, and left a generation full of questions, and another full of pain and sorrow buried beneath the surface. Few men have brought more human suffering into the world than Justice Henry Blackmun.

3. The Rosenbergs

Along with their associates, the Rosenbergs betrayed our country by spying for the Soviets during the Cold War. The Rosenbergs were part of a cabal which gave Atomic secrets to the Russians. The judge in sentencing them to death concluded:

I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb [...] has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason.

And it would cause many more deaths in Vietnam and cost our nation Billions of Dollars in fighting the Cold War.

2. Woodrow Wilson

Wilson illustrated the grave danger of choosing pure academiacs for the Presidency. Wilson with but two years of Gubernatorial experience rose to the Presidency. He was narrowly re-elected in 1916 on the platform of “He Kept Us Out of War”, then in 1917 led us into war. He fought a war to make the world “safe for Democracy”, but used strong arm tactics Teddy Roosevelt could have never dreamed of. Also, during the war, he managed to turn the relatively simple 7-bracket tax code into a 52-bracket monstrosity.

What separates Wilson from naive liberals of future years is the impact of his war. Entering World War I led to an overwhelming defeat of Germany. At Versailles, we emasculated Germany, not providing a “just peace” but rather planting the seeds of hatred and resentment which would flower into the evil of Nazi Germany.

Had America stayed out of World War I, there would have been a different result. Almost certainly, there’d have been no World War II, no Cold War, no Korea, no Vietnam. America’s step onto the world stage, beaming with good intentions led to disaster. Out of these disasters, Americans have gotten to show their goodness by sacrificing the lives of million for noble causes, which would never have been necessary, but for this man who reminds us that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

1. Margaret Sanger

The worst American of them all. Sanger established Planned Parenthood with the goal of less “unfit” people breeding, including Blacks and other minorities. Sanger was undeniably a Fascist. She wrote, “Give dysgenic groups [people with 'bad genes'] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization.”

From Sanger sprang out a movement that treats children as a disease and finds the best solution to misery in human life as its destruction.

Julian Malveaux, a hard leftist concluded that Sanger was a racist:

For all her positive influence, I see Sanger as a tarnished heroine whose embrace of the eugenics movement showed racial insensitivity, at best. From her associates, as well as from some of the articles that were published in Sanger’s magazine, The Birth Control Review, it is possible to conclude that “racially insensitive” is too mild a description. Indeed, some of her statements, taken in or out of context, are simply racist. And she never rebuked eugenicists who believed in improving the hereditary qualities of a race or breed by controlling mating in order to eliminate “undesirable” characteristics and promote “desirable” traits.

Words that Sanger used like the “unfit,” and “morons,” were euphemisms for Blacks and other racial “inferiors” in a racist time. Many of Sanger’s associates worked with the Nazis. Today, her group are missionaries of death, spreading it to the four corners of the globe. As for her own attempts at making a master race, of breeding out “the unfit,” Planned Parenthood continues to work hard today, as 45% of Black babies die from abortion and 62.5% of Planned Parenthood clinics exist in areas with higher than average Black populations.

As our world slouches towards the point of using people for spare parts and euthanasia, we can look at Margaret Sanger and know the agent through which evil spread. The ethics of Planned Parenthood, the ethics of Margaret Sanger stand today as a threat to civilization and all that is decent and good.

It is thus that Sanger’s “honor” as the worst American is well-earned.

Linked at The Iowa Voice