Best/Worst Presidents

[Direckshun]

I've been watching the History Channel a lot this week on their special highlighting all 47 Presidents we've had. It calls itself the "ultimate guide" to the Presidents, but it's mostly a great primer on all the Presidents.

Anyway, it's been a while since we've done this.

But who are the best 5 Presidents in American history in your opinion, and who were 5 of the worst? Do your best to explain.

Also, where would you place our most recent Presidents (because why not): Obama, Bush II, Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, Carter

[La literatura]

Originally Posted by frazod

It's long since over and done with now, but nobody ever seems to hold Lincoln accountable for the rivers of blood that ran through this country during his presidency, and that annoys me.

You hold the presidency of Jefferson Davis in similar accountancy, do you?

[La literatura]

Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501

The fair question to ask, though, is if the only way to unify the country was for the Union to win. And seeing that the Union was struggling early in the war, the only way to win was to win big in the later battles, and the only way to win big was massive bloodshed and destruction.

I honestly don't think anything would have been resolved without mass devastation. The Union had to be a clear winner. Who knows where we would be today if the Union lost to the Confederacy.

We'd be a lot less populated because no foreigner would want to migrate to a southern-led aristocratic hell with their "peculiar institution" choking the breath of what would have once been considered a dream of equality, happiness, and liberty.

Thank God the south was put down. Unfortunately the Reconstruction (a new Reformation) was never carried out to its full promises. The Confederacy and the landed nobility that belched it out is one of the great embarrassments of humanity, as is its Jim Crow aftermath. Another embarrassment is the Confederate-sympathizers who rail for their Lost Cause.

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by La literatura

We'd be a lot less populated because no foreigner would want to migrate to a southern-led aristocratic hell with their "peculiar institution" choking the breath of what would have once been considered a dream of equality, happiness, and liberty.

Which was exchanged for by robber barons and crooked opportunists who were essentially doing the same in an industrial context. Slavery was disgusting. But racism was everywhere, as was elite opportunism. The only reason the South needed to lose the war was because they were clinging to a slave practice that of course was immoral, but also had potential to really, really hold the US back from meaningful industrial progress.

[DementedLogic]

Originally Posted by Ebolapox

eh, FDR also doesn't belong on any top president lists either. people completely ignore the fact that he tried to pack the courts to get all of his radical programs through. he's really one of the originators of the welfare state that is the modern USA

Yeah, but Liberals don't care about that. They believe that FDR saved us from the Depression, when in reality he turned the Depression into the Great Depression, and ushered in the welfare state that is destroying our country today.

Most people would agree that many of the dictator-ish moves that Lincoln made, would not qualify him as a top president. Yet their revisionist version of history allows them to believe that he was some great historical figure that saved the union and ended slavery for moral reasons.

[DementedLogic]

Originally Posted by La literatura

No, it's not. In part because it ignores the really troubling fact that Lincoln didn't start the Civil War.

What do you not understand about secession being perfectly legal pre-civil war? Lincoln blockaded southern ports and marched his military into independent sovereign states. This is what caused the civil war. Lincoln might not have solely caused southern states to secede, but he did play a major role in it.

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by DementedLogic

Yeah, but Liberals don't care about that. They believe that FDR saved us from the Depression, when in reality he turned the Depression into the Great Depression, and ushered in the welfare state that is destroying our country today.

Most people would agree that many of the dictator-ish moves that Lincoln made, would not qualify him as a top president. Yet their revisionist version of history allows them to believe that he was some great historical figure that saved the union and ended slavery for moral reasons.

Who are you referring to by "most people"? Almost every historian with deep background of Lincoln has him in their top 3 or top. There is no President in history who had as much positive impact on the US as we know it today as Lincoln, even if the means to get there aren't as sunshiney as we portray it.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by frazod

Most of the casualties in the war were Northern, not Southern.

I guess they didn't cover that during your last viewing of Cold Mountain.

As a raw number or percentage of total population?

Actually, who cares, the South lost. Your argument is like a football team saying they got more yards than the other game in a game that they lost. Whoop-de-doo.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by DementedLogic

I don't understand the love affair with Lincoln. He completely ignored the constitution.

Not completely. Selectively. But if he adhered to it then the US wouldn't exist anymore.

The man treated the executive branch as a dictatorship.

You did note the troubled times in which he held office, yes? And how he didn't exactly go all Hitler on everyone...

He pushed the country into a civil war.

errr...no. Most Southern states had seceded before he even took office. Hell, JEFFERSON DAVIS took office as the Confederacy's Presidnet before Lincoln took office...

He completely disregarded civil liberties. Lincoln's presidency was the closest this country has ever been to tyranny. Had he not been assassinated, we probably wouldn't be a free country today.

Comical. You clearly have no idea what really happened and what his post-war plans were.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by frazod

Were you wanting to blame Bush?

Do you blame the US/UK/France and Russia for the "most destructive war in German history" as well?

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by frazod

The industrial revolution would have ended slavery just as certainly as the war did, only without half a million casualties.

The war wasn't fought by the North over slavery. The war was fought to save the Union. Slavery was the reason the South left, but not why the North went to war.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by frazod

You tell me, would you rather have to feed and house 100 slaves, or own one ****ing tractor?

Perhaps it would have eliminated slavery, but you're ignoring the rest of what came with slavery. The South wasn't keen to have millions of former slaves freed and their entire social structure, in addition to their economic structure, was built in slavery and the slave system. Hard to see how they would set the slaves free.

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by frazod

There was certainly manual labor after the war, too. Thanks to Jim Crow laws, blacks could be rounded up and jailed for the slightest offense, then sent back to work the same land as prisoners that they had as slaves. Yaaay freedom!

And the absolute, underlying support for slavery was Southern reliance upon it as the cornerstone of their agrarian economy. Take that away and things change. How much or how quickly we'll never know.

The thing that pisses me off about people like you is that all you think about is FREEING THE SLAVES FREEDOM FREEDOM but you don't give a single **** about the hundreds of thousands who died doing it, or the hundreds of thousands more who were physically and emotionally damaged for life. I wonder if the dead would have thought it was worth waiting out technology?

So the South is to blame for causing a war that was completely useless and caused hundreds of thousands of lives to be lost because their withdrawal from the Union, wholly motivated by saving slavery, was unnecessary due to upcoming technologies that would be invented (but that nobody anticipated)?

Interesting argument. I think I like it.

[Dave Lane]

Originally Posted by gblowfish

Five Best (In no particular order):
Washington
Jefferson
Lincoln
FDR
Truman

Five Worst (In no particular order):
Hoover
Pierce
Buchanan
Harding
Nixon

Ranking the Prez's of my lifetime:
I was born in 1959, best to worst:
JFK
Ike
Clinton
Reagan
Obama
Bush 41
Ford
Carter
LBJ
George W Bush
Nixon

Total agreement

[frazod]

Originally Posted by Amnorix

As a raw number or percentage of total population?

Actually, who cares, the South lost. Your argument is like a football team saying they got more yards than the other game in a game that they lost. Whoop-de-doo.

I wondered when your bitch ass would show up. Typical Boston pussy response.

SO WHAT IF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS DIED? MILLIONS OF LIVES RUINED? **** 'EM! THEY WERE JUST PEONS ANYWAY, SO WHO CARES? EAT SHIT YOU ORPHANED BASTARDS, FIND WORK AT FACTORY SOMEWHERE!

[Amnorix]

Originally Posted by DementedLogic

Lincoln was a protectionist. He knew that he could win the presidency without a single southern state, and he exploited it. He proposed high tariffs on imported goods to protect Northern manufacturers, and then spent most of the revenue from those tariffs, on pet projects for the North. His whole goal was to redistribute wealth from the south to the north through tariffs and corporate welfare.

The problem with his plan was that "these United States" was a voluntary union of sovereign states. The southern states began to secede because of his northern protectionism. When the southern states started seceding, he realize that his big tax and spend policies wouldn't work without them. So he blockaded southern ports in order to choke their economies and force them to rejoin the union. Instead, he forced the south to act in self defense and fire the first shot of the civil war.

Lincoln never wanted to end slavery. He made it very clear several times. The Emancipation Proclamation didn't actually free any slaves at all. It only applied to states south of the Mason-Dixon line, which he had no authority over, and it was only a wartime tactic. The goal of the EP was to get the southern slaves to revolt against their owners, and to sway England to not ally with the southern states. Even after the civil war, Lincoln did not want to Emancipate the slaves form the northern states.


That right there is enough to make him the worst president of all-time, and that doesn't even touch on his blatant disregard for the constitution.
-He suspended habeas corpus without congress.
-He imprisoned federal judges for ruling against him.
-He deported a congressman for voting against his proposals.
-He used the military to detain Maryland Legislatures, so that they could not vote on secession.
-He shut down newspapers and arrested editors and reporters for not reporting the official government stories.
-He instituted the first draft and had deserters executed.
-He instituted the first income tax.


I could keep going, but I've probably wasted enough time as it is.

Christ, it's BEP all over again. Yes, DementedLogic -- perfect name...