The Right-Wing News website just polled some "right wing" bloggers, coming up with THIS LIST of the two dozen "greatest figures of the 20th century."
A couple of names jumped out at me as ODD choices for any form of a conservative, notably FDR and MLK. [Mikhail Gorbachev? Really, Dawn.] I could have done without all the generals. And what exactly has Billy Graham accomplished to rate as a top figure of the century?
I was glad to see the Beatles on the list. Artists, builders, inventors and writers have something clear to show for what they've done. A millenium from now, the artistic achievement of Miles Davis and Motown will be more significant than the US Civil War. The Beatles and the Stones will rank much more important in the long run than JFK or Nixon.
Subject to further thought, here would be my alternate
TOP 10 FIGURES OF THE 20TH CENTURY
1) Henry Ford
2) Ayn Rand
3) John Rockfeller
4) Bill Gates
5) The Beatles
6) Robert Heinlein
7) Prince
8) Elvis Costello
9) Miles Davis
10) Thomas Edison
10) Linus Pauling
10) Billy Wilder
10) Elvis Presley
10) Berry Gordy
Note the lack of politicians on my list. FDR would maybe qualify if managing to drag the depression out an extra ten years or concentration camps for Japanese-Americans count as great achievments. If you have to have an Allied political leader, let's just settle on enshrining Churchill.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Mac Diva
Lack of politics, and you cite Ann Rand, who was just about as political as a person could get? Al! Al! Al!
I do agree with you about artists being important to American culture. My list included writers such as John Dos Passos and Sinclair Lewis. However, it was not as tilted toward art as yours. I also included figures from other fields, including medicine. I'll plop the URL here once I get an entry that is partly about that topic up. Probably tomorrow.
For now, here is my entry for John's previous inquiry, the worst figures in American history. For the record, I was among the people Right Wing News surveyed. My list for that one leaned toward bad presidents and Confederates.
2 - Dawn
Gorbachev made my list because he was the first leader of the U.S.S.R to basically back down and let communism do what communism was supposed to do: fail.
I mean geez, I think I am allowed one personal pick on my list of questionable quality. It's not like I picked Hitler for crissakes.
3 - Eric Olsen
I wasn't asked, John doesn't like me because I married Dawn thereby taking her off the market. For all the importance sports has in this country (and world), I can't believe not one sports figure made it.
4 - Rodney Welch
The New Yorker used to occasionally run the titles of thoroughly unpromising articles under the heading: "Articles We Never Finished Reading."
I clicked on Al's Ayn Rand link to discover a first-class example of a "Link I Could Never Bring Myself to Click": "...listen to Gary Hull's five-hour seminar `Introduction to Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand' in streaming audio."
5 - Al Barger
A five hour streaming audio philosophy lecture does sound a bit dull. You'd probably be more entertained and better enlightened just to grab a plain old paperback copy of The Fountainhead.
6 - Mac Diva
Al, I can't believe you are promoting Ayn Rand -- a mediocre writer and thinker I associate with college sophomores. They like her because her works are basically a justification of selfishness and many people that age believe the world is going to be their oyster. (Ninety-some percent are in for one hell of a surprise.) Grow up!
Dawn, I considered citing Gorbachev, but went with Lenin for a Russian leader. Think he had more influence in world history and that it will continue to be felt, despite the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. Kruschev would have been a justifiable choice, too.
7 - Al Barger
Miss Diva, if you had read even just the damned Cliff Notes for Ayn Rand, you'd know there was more to her work than you're describing here.
Just her outline of the basic issues of philosophy rates her as one of the greater philosophers in history, let alone any of her actual answers.
8 - Eric Olsen
I don't agree that "enlightened self interest" is selfish, and is a foundation of both functioning democracy and capitalism, although I do not pray to the woman.
9 - Mac Diva
Al, I forced myself to read Ayn Rand. Never has there been more turgid prose penned. Biographies about her are better reads. For example, her obsession with seducing younger men is an interesting example of, as Eric says, "enlighted self interest."
10 - Al Barger
That young men thing is SUCH an incredibly cheap shot, and does not in any way address any of her philosophical arguments.
She was an outstanding writer, very readable with great passion and a distinctive personal voice. The problem isn't that she didn't know how to write, it's that you just didn't like what she had to say.
11 - David Smith
Al, Al, Al! Outstanding writer? Come on! Now, don't get me wrong. I've read and recommended Fountainhead and Anthem many times. Atlas Shrugged got on my personal Ten Timers list long ago and I probably still haven't read it for the last time. But no way is she one tenth the writer she thought herself to be.
And if you cannot acknowledge that the sexual dynamic of her real world life impacted the fantasy life of her fiction, then I think you're being more than a little disingenuous.
12 - mike
I was driving my fifteen trillion ton oil tanker through some environmentally senstive Arctic terrain, and I needed to cast anchor. So I threw over a copy of Atlas Shrugged, and the ship came to a complete stop. Al is right: this is an extremely valuable book, useful in all sorts of situations.
13 - mike
And what's Martin Luther King doing on that list?! Hands off, you right wing dogs, he's ours! (Anti-Vietnam War, pro-union, pro-affirmative action; not a right wing bone in his body!)
14 - Mac Diva
Thanks, David and Mike! You guys have got ole Ayn's number.
Al, relax. Perhaps she will jump your bones in the next life.
15 - Al Barger
Ha, ha. She had an affair with a younger man, therefore her thought need not be considered seriously.
Just for the record, Atlas Shrugged is the most important book of the century. No mockery or scoffing will make it not so.
16 - Steve Rhodes
I could easily think of 100 more important books of the 2Oth century.
I remember eating with a woman in my dorm who declared she was devoted to Ayn Rand and objectivism. Nearly 20 years later, there are still college students like her (though now they can pose with Ann Coulter and Dr. Laura).
17 - Rodney Welch
Only a hundred? Al's opinions on Atlas Shrugged are mere Objectivist opinions, shared by people who can only judge literature in accord with their philosophical or personal biases. It's no different than, say, hearing an evangelical say that the "Left Behind" series are the greatest books ever written, or a child say "The Tawny Scrawny Lion" is the besk book ever written. In their own mind, these judgments are perfectly sound. They just don't apply to anyone else.
18 - Mac Diva
Agreed, Rodney.
Al, believe me -- good literature is something different from a polemical tract like Atlas Shrugged, regardless of the ideological leanings of the writer.
19 - Joe
I thought Rand's work was pretty interesting, if somewhat overwrought, but at least she appeared to know the meanings of the words she used. No mean feat for a non-native speaker of English.
20 - TheSenorita
Not to sound like a groupie, but people who are intrigued by Ayn Rand's work really owe it to themselves to read Nietzsche. Much of what she said, he said years earlier and much more poetically (Zarathustra, his most "long-winded" work, is still much shorter and more beautiful than Atlas Shrugged). His astute observations of the human condition are more illuminating than Rand's essentially fundamentalist preaching.
21 - MeAgain
I didn't mind all the generals ...they (and the inventors and capitalists) helped us have the leisure to pursue the arts and entertainment so high on your list. Also, would Miles Davis and Motown have been free to succeed as they did without the Civil War? (I know the war wasn't fought to "free the slaves;" do you think they'd have been freed eventually anyway?)
IMO, the people who invented the birth control pill should be on that list. They did more to empower women than the lawyers who cooked up Roe v. Wade ever did.
22 - debbie
"And what exactly has Billy Graham accomplished to rate as a top figure of the century?"
Are you kidding? He has been our leading Religious Revivalist for half a century. He is like the Pope of Protestant America.
23 - Al Barger
OK, so Billy Graham held some big tent revivals. That idea does fill me with a bit of warm nostalgic glow, but what has it accomplished to further humanity? How many jobs did he create? What did he invent?
I'm sure Rev Graham is a fine fellow, and a sincere man of God and all that. I just don't see what he's accomplished that would rate him as one of the greatest figures of the century.
24 - The Theory
the fact that we are here arguing about him betrays the fact that Billy Graham is worthy to be on this list. I personally probably would not have added him, however, have no qualms with him being there.
peace.
25 - Al Barger
Does this same "fact we are arguing" logic also prove the worthiness of Ayn Rand?