Which individual has damaged America most in history ?

Yeah right creating the moden corporate state out of whole cloth is "not much damage".

And by the way The Great Depression wasn't this country's first. It was however the longest and largely because the government tried to help both under Hoover and Roosevelt. Unemployment under Roosevelt did not sink below 17% until WWII.

 

Much of it was already underway by previous administrations.

 

You do that, because I'm sure it will make a difference.

 

I'm not voting it down, but I don't care for it. It's rather shallow.

 

Harry S. Truman

Did a few good things, like executive order for integration in the military, and vetoing the Taft-Hartley Act.

Did a lot more things which had far reaching negative consequences:

1. Signed the National Security Act of 1947, creating CIA without any oversight, an organization that went on to use ex WW2 Nazi snipers in covert operations and assassinations. CIA responsible for Bay of Pigs, and quite probably involved in the assassination of JFK.

2. Authorized the use of Nuclear bombs to vaporize entire cities of civilians in Japan, when the war was already over. Naval and Air blockade and isolation of Japan would have gotten an eventual surrender, without having to invade. The excuse that 1 million American lives were saved, is therefore PURE GARBAGE propaganda. Thus, leaving the legacy of USA= the ONLY country to have used Nuclear weapons of mass destruction to annhilate 200 000 civilians in about 3 minutes.

3. Recognized the existence of the state of Israel 11 minutes after David Ben-Gurion, head of the World Zionist Organization did, after a series of operations with well funded and supplied Zionist militia outfitted with British spitfire airplanes. After 300,000 Palestinian and Arab civilians set to flight, and Jerusalem occupied, the state of Israel was declared and UN resolution 181 became meaningless.

4. Defined the idea of a "Cold War" thus expanding the Military Industrial Complex, which profited many an industrialist at the expense of a lot of civilians dead and UN and US soldiers being sacrificed in accordance with the "Truman Doctrine" to contain the "spread of communism" anywhere and everywhere by force of arms. Proposed to meet the aggressor with an "iron fist" and manufactured a "crisis" with the former Soviet Union for not withdrawing troops from Iran on schedule. Thus the break down in communication and diplomacy was escalated.

5. Violated the conventional Declaration of War relegated to Congress, by declaring a "police action" to send UN troops to South Korea. After a brilliant and stunning win by Gen. MacArthur, Truman sabotaged the victory by not allowing the bridges over the Yalu river to be blown. The consequence was a massive Chinese Army invasion, across those very same bridges and a 4 year war that netted BILLIONS of profits for Industrialists, while US soldiers died to retake the same hills again and again. Prelude to Vietam.

6. So much corruption in Truman Admininstration that Truman approval rating dropped to 32%, one of worst in US history, only surpassed by George W.Bush.

7. "The Buck Stops Here" = BIG LIE

 

You haven't looked at what raygun did to the country with this trickle down BS than have you?

 

Of course I have. Republican solutions for every problem are always top-down. I'm just saying you can always find some action by some President that is either just as bad or worse.

 

Yosemite is suspicious.

 

Since I foresaw and already addressed everything you say here in my previous post, which you of course ignored, I will just repost with the pertinent parts in bold!!

What you are doing is EXACTLY the same thing as when socialists tell us socialism actually works great, but that since it has never been tried, we don't know that yet. The reality is that socialism HAS been tried, and so has your ideology. It has just been tried with the impositions of reality placed upon it. Therefore you claim it hasn't been tried. It is quite ridiculous. The state and capitalism are inexorably linked. You cannot remove the state from capitalism, it is impossible. So saying that because the state was involved, your ideology has not been tried, is a ridiculous copout. The state exists, and will play a role in almost all political changes and trends in the world. The trends of the last 40 years have been dominated by the ideas of Friedman and Hayek.

PS. The idea that interest rates should be kept as close to zero as possible is an idea championed by, you guessed it, Milton Friedman. He was, unlike many libertarians, aware of the realities of the world, and DID promote policies for the fed to undertake.

 

That is true, I think I might go with Yogi Bear. I know he isn't a person, but he is an individual, and I believe his picanic basket stealing promoted a culture of greed and avarice which has since percolated American society, and led to our decline!!

 

its the same here, you dont see the problem in that statement though ? hows about making everyone pay the tax that they are supposed to pay, corporations and all, then seeing how things add up, thats what brought down greece btw, not social programmes they couldnt afford it was tax evasion they were only collecting about half the tax that was actually due which bankrupted the country thats the lesson there not cutting social programmes aggressively tackling loopholes and tax havens

 

he meant 3/4 of what they get just now, which is correct

 

Too many overlook or do not know the devastating costs of the War Between the States aka...The Civil War holds the dubious distinction of having the highest costs in total American deaths of any war in American history including World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, and the Korean War combined.

 

In case you have not noticed, our spending has no relation to our taxation. It's based on spending priorities of the Congress and the Administration, not how much money we're bringing in via taxes. That's why we have a 2012 budget deficit of 1.1 trillion. We're not spending a lot of money on infrastructure because the administration only allocated 100 billion from the stimulus bill to infrastructure ( the 2005 infrastructure bill was 250 billion ). We're not spending money on the border fence. ICE agents, or immigration courts because the current administration is open borders/pro amnesty. And we're not hiring more FBI agents because that's low priority, although we're hiring thousands of IRS agents.

 

How Lincoln Could Have Prevented The War Between The States



Abraham Lincoln was President during a brutal War in which an estimated 625,000 Americans died. This is nearly as many as all the Americans who have died in all the other wars of the United States. Lincoln was more responsible for the nature of the war between the stats than any other individual.

Lincoln cold have prevented the military conflict that had such terrible consequences.
The US Constitution does not mention secession, does not state that the Union is to be perpetual, and defines no procedure for states to withdraw or become independent. Many abolitionists had advocated that northern states could secede in order to form a nation that would be free of slave states. During the transition between Lincoln’s election and his inauguration the Buchanan administration allowed seven of the southern states to withdraw.

John Pendleton Kennedy, an ex-congressman from Maryland, advocated a “separate confederacy of the border states” in his pamphlet The Border States, which was published on December 15, 1860. On January 2, 1861 Governor Thomas Hicks of Maryland took the position that a central confederacy of border states could solve Maryland’s problems. On that day he met with three members of a Union meeting and wrote to Governor William Burton of Delaware. Hicks also wrote to the governors of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Missouri, and Ohio about the idea of forming a central confederacy if the Federal Union were disrupted. Like many, Governor Hicks opposed the use of force to keep Maryland or any other state in the Union. While the seven states in the deep South were seceding, the border slave states of Maryland and Delaware were considering seceding and forming a Central Confederacy with New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. Many Democrats and newspapers in these five states advocated this proposal.

Then why did seven southern states secede when Lincoln had promised to protect slavery in their states and even enforce the controversial Fugitive Slave Law in the other states? The South felt exploited by the North because of the high tariffs that were the largest source of Federal taxation that resulted in southern taxes being used in other parts of the country.

As a former Whig, Lincoln was a strong advocate of high protective tariffs. The Morrill Tariff Act was passed on March 2, 1861, and tariffs were increased early in Lincoln’s presidency to raise revenues.

South Carolina seceded on December 24, 1860, and by February 1, 1861 Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had also voted and declared secession. Six days later these seven states adopted a constitution for the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama, and they elected Jefferson Davis president. If these were revolutions, they were quite peaceful so far. They went through some democratic process by conventions and in the state legislatures, and apparently their state governments accepted the new nation with little resistance.



Lincoln took the strong tyrannical position, that states have no right to secede from the Union. He believed it was his obligation as President to enforce the laws that would keep the states in the Union even against their will as expressed by democratic conventions and state legislatures. His policy is ironic and even hypocritical because this position conflicts with Lincoln’s own doctrine of the right of revolution that he expressed in Congress on January 12, 1848 during the Mexican War when he said,


Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power,
have the right to rise up
and shake off the existing government
and form a new one that suits them better.
This is a most valuable—a most sacred right—
a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
Nor is this right confined to cases in which
the whole people of an existing government
may choose to exercise it.
Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize
and make their own so much of the territory as they inhabit.
More than this, a majority of any portion of such people
may revolutionize, putting down a minority,
intermingled with or near about them,
who may oppose their movement.
Such minority was precisely the case
of the Tories of our own revolution.
It is a quality of revolutions not to go
by old lines or old laws,
but to break up both and make new ones.


In his inaugural address President Lincoln warned against a civil war while promising that he would not invade the South. Yet he indicated that the Federal Government would continue to occupy its property in the South and would attempt to collect “duties and imposts.” He promised he would not impose “obnoxious strangers” in Federal offices in hostile regions. The mails would continue unless repelled. He called for “a peaceful solution of the national troubles and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and affections.” However, in his view this came to mean only by the retention of the states in the Union.

Early in his presidency Lincoln rejected the option of letting the southern states withdraw peacefully. He took the position that secession is illegal and that the use of force against the Federal Government was rebellion and treason against the United States. He refused to recognize the Confederate States as legal entities and would not let anyone in his administration negotiate with their representatives. He also rejected an offer of mediation by Napoleon III of France. In March 1861 Jefferson Davis sent peace commissioners to Washington with an offer to pay for all Federal property in the South and to take on the southern portion of the national debt. However, Lincoln refused even to acknowledge them, thus blocking any attempt to resolve the conflicts by peaceful means. He took the hard line that the southern states must return to the Union. Unless they did so, or unless he relinquished the forts and tariffs, it became inevitable that the two sides would fight. His position has been compared to that of the British empire, which demanded that their American colonists pay their taxes.

 

Of course you can see how well trickle down government works years after the "Summer of Recovery". LOL

 

By that same reasoning they could simply keep taking 25% until there was only $1 left and it could be said that they "still receive 3/4 of their income". It is an absurd mischaracterization.

 

I agree with a majority of what you say here, but not quite all of it, nor all of your emphasis.


When people in the South name the Civil War the "War of Northern Agression", they are not far from the mark.


But the abolition of Slavery was a large contributor to the reason that the Civil War occurred. Only the Civil War with the North Victorious could have ended Slavery. Because of that, it has been, IMHO, an overall good thing in America's history.



But Lincoln did not push conditions to create the Civil War for the purpose of ending Slavery, he stated time and again that if he could prevent the War by keeping slavery in place, he would have done so.


IMHO, the Civil War was allot more about a battle between to different camps of Wealthy Elites, the Agricultural Based, and the Industrial Based. Well, the outcome of such as War was easy to predict, and will continue to be unless huge advances in Bio Weaponry are achieved.


I think it is a toss up whether Lincoln or FDR did more long term damage to the country, but since FDR's damage would not have been possible if not for the seed sown by Lincoln, I guess I'd have to say Lincoln.

 

I guess we can define Bush's 2008 collapse as the "Summer of prosperity" huh? That what that was??? ROFL!!!

 

I'm gonna go with McCarthy.

 

Where to, China ?

 

General Robert E. Lee. If he had accepted command of the Union forces just before the Civil War started (Lincoln offered him the job), the war would have been over in two years and the South would have suffered much less. Sticking by his home state of Virginia made things much worse for Virginia in the end and got hundreds of thousands of more Americans killed or maimed.

 

That's ridiculous. He was loyal to his country. You can't blame the stupid decisions of other people on Lee just because he turned down the job of Union general.

 

It is amazing how many conservatives in our country I've read dismissing one of our most revered presidents, and not only that, saying he was one of the worst.

It's like they have a completely contrarian view of history.

Lincoln was one of the worst because ... he held the nation together during its most trying time? Didn't let the Sourth secede? Freed the black man? All of the above?

 

You are calling him the worst ever based on unsupported speculation. The South was like the Tea Party of today. They never would have accepted such a compromise.