Ten Worst Americans List

Alexandra at All Things Beautiful issued a challenge to the blogosphere: Come up with a list of the Ten Worst Americans. Ed at Captain's Quarters has a most thorough list, dividing his response up into five posts: Explanation, Number One, Numbers Two through Four, Numbers Five through Seven, and Numbers Eight through Ten. Tons of responses and comments at both blogs, although Alexandra has a much more extensive list of links to other respondents. I'm not going to be as thorough in explanation as Captain Ed (hey, nobody can be as thorough as Captain Ed!), but here are my choices for the Ten Worst Americans: 10. Madalyn Murray O'Hair - Founder of American Atheists organization. Hated religion and Christianity. Plaintiff in Supreme Court cases which eliminated prayer and Bible reading in American schools. I hold her indirectly responsible for the violence and immorality which has plagued our schools since the 1960s. 9. Hugh Hefner - Founder of Playboy magazine, Hefner normalized and, indeed, glorified pornography and the anything goes lifestyle that so harmed American society from the 1960s on. 8. Roger Baldwin - Founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and an avowed Communist. His organization has done more harm to America than any number of terrorist organizations. Hateful of religion in general and Christianity in particular. 7. Warren G. Harding - A shoo-in for the most incompetent, immoral, dishonest, and crooked president in our nation's history. His philandering made Bill Clinton look like a saint, and his cabinet was filled with petty crooks (Teapot Dome, anyone?). 6. James Buchanan - 15th U.S. President (1857-1861). As Nero fiddled while Rome burned, so did Buchanan while America schismed in the run-up to the Civil War. Buchanan is here as much for what he didn't do (show leadership and try to prevent the Civil War) as for what he did (supposedly he lobbied Supreme Court justices to recognize slaveholders' rights, and assisted Chief Justice Roger Taney in shaping the Dred Scott decision). 5. Jimmy Carter - I doubt that any American did more in a single four-year period to endanger America than Jimmy Carter. Take your pick of his negligent policies: Iran, arms control, the Panama Canal giveaway, weakening of the American military, failure to fight the Cold War. Or look at Carter's anti-American carrying on once he left office. (North Korea, anyone?) Captain Ed goes into much more detail, and he's right on every word. 4. Lyndon Baines Johnson - Assumed the presidency after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963. True, he did get pioneering civil rights legisation passed, but he was also responsible for the explosion of the welfare state - the consequences of which are still shaping our country today. One of the most crooked politicans of the 20th century (no small feat, that), he was clueless in prosecuting the Vietnam War (making bomb targeting decisions himself, just as an example) and needlessly cost many American lives. 3. J. Edgar Hoover - The cross-dressing supercop who headed the FBI for nearly half a century. Used the FBI as his personal spy service, accumulating gossip and blackmail material on thousands of Americans. Again, Captain Ed goes into more detail on Hoover, whom he picked as the worst American. 2. Roger B. Taney - Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1836-1864. He consistently upheld the rights of slaveowners and opposed efforts to restrict slavery, in decisions such as Prigg v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1842), Moore v. Illinois (1852), and one of the worst Court decisions in history, Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857). 1. Harry Blackmun - Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1970 to 1994. Authored the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion, and thus responsible for the termination of tens of millions of lives in utero - mass murder on a scale that makes Hitler look like an amateur.