Great men and women of history. Good or bad.

Who is yours and who you believe is one?

Not great only because they did good or evil but how they became who they are through good efforts, manipulation.

Great as in who they became frrom who they were.

My first one is

Julius ceaser

 

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Marcus Brutus

 

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i´d like to mention Otto von Bismarck , a great statesman

 

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Who? Don't ask me...... I just read a book entitled "The Most Evil Men and Women in History" which told me about things regarding some blod-thirsty rulers...... they all fit to this thread.

 

Abraham Lincoln is the only good and virtuous man with any intelligence that has ever in the history of the human race ever ever ever held any kind of power to his name. Constantine was a dictator, and like slaveholders (since a dictator's subjects are essentially his slaves), there is no such thing as a benevolent dictator.

Bismarck knew his shit. I'll give him that. He essentially engineered World War 1, the war that was at least the most meaningless, in modern terms, that I am aware of.

 

Jimmy Carter was a good & virtous man with a very high IQ, unfortunately, he sucked as a president. :m:

 

Bismarck knew his shit. I'll give him that. He essentially engineered World War 1

How, if he was dead by 1914? What wrought WWI on the world was much more about alliances, and industrialization. Surely Bismarks unification of the German states was ruthless and compotent, but it was only a factor.

To me the most influencial men in history are two:

- Jesus Christ.
- Karl Marx.

 

I'd say that those who were never known about because they were the ones that guided those in the positions of power to do what they did.

 

Great animal of history: Old Abe

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Genghis Khan is greatest military strategist in history of mankind. He kicked every country's ass with nothing.

 

with nothing ??? uhmmm .... what about his hordes ?

 

Zhuge Liang [Kongming]

 

Tupac Amaru (hint for the slow: not the rapper!)

 

Why do people think Lincoln was such a great president. He persided over the greatest tragedy this country has ever seen and only in the darkest hour did he free the slaves. The slaves were freed in such a way that for the next hunderd years they were second class citezens. How many people died and how much economic hardship did our country face because of Lincoln?

My vote for Great leaders are George Washington - the first leader of a military power to voluntarily give up power in over two thousand years. My other vote would be Michial Gorbechev - He released the grip of the Soviet Union all over Eastern Europe and within the Soviet Union itself and allowed and encouraged democracy to be established. He did this by giving his power to the people. They rejected him but that makes the story even better. Unlike most dictators that have been disposed over the last 20 years he did not steel money from the people nor was he ever accused of atrocities when he left office.

 

The engineering of the Civil War began long before Abraham Lincoln was even born, possibly when it was decided to allow the South to retain slavery, possibly before then, during the early years of White North America. He did not cause the Civil War by any means whatsoever. It had been a long ambition of his to for every man to be free, but if he were to do so early on in the war he would have alienated the Union states that had not seceded but also had slavery, which was something he could not risk until he was sure that victory was his.

Had Lincoln not been assassinated, the Reconstruction would have been significantly different, and more effective. He only survived a few days after the war had ended. The fact that blacks remained second class citizens is largely due to his successors, mostly Johnson, who was a southerner. Although it wasn't supposed to happen, high ranking Confederates regained their positions not only in the government but also in society, when Lincoln had originally expressed a desire to keep the same men who had seceded from regaining even the power to vote.

I doubt a better man has ever existed that could have handled the Civil War as well as Lincoln did.

As for economic hardship, the North prospered from the war, as usual, and although by the end of the war most of the south had been driven to poverty and starvation, the region had industrialized at an unprecedented rate. There was a definite transformation.

Nah, Carter just experienced a lot of bad luck, that's all. He inherited a piss poor economy from Ford (I think? I'm a little rusty...) and, while he tried to free the Iranian hostages, it was by no means his fault that the operation failed. It was just bad luck.

Just imagine how different the world would be today if Carter had won a second term. No Reagan. No Bush. Possibly no Clinton. Definitely no Bush the second. Practically a utopia.

One of many. The war, and world war two, would never have escalated had Germany remained a weak Confederacy. America wouldn't have become the power that it is today without the two world wars, which almost completely obliterated Europe. Bismarck is one to blame for our hegemony.

Arggh! It wasn't Christ! It was Constantine!

As for Marx, I'll let you go on that one...

Who was the other one? I think George just got tired of being powerful. I believe, but I am not positive, that he was never really interested in being president, but just took the job because everyone else wanted him to.

 

Bismarck is one to blame for our hegemony.

I think that could be said, but it's not true. What really made the US powerful today is the sharp decline of the British Empire. Yes WWI changed the balance of the world's power balance, but it was destined to happen that the US becomes a hegemonic power. WWI just exacerbated that process by leaps and bounds. I think the most significant thing Bismarck did to alter the power in Europe was 1871 with the invasion of Paris, which was the prelude to WWI if I have ever seen one.

Arggh! It wasn't Christ! It was Constantine!


Maybe to you...not to me, Jesus affects us more then Constantine.

 

Pollux:

So what did Abe do other than react to the sussesion of the South? I'll admit that the Gettysburg Address was a wonderful speech and he may have been a good person but what did he do? Maybe that he insisted that the war be fought and that the Union be preserved.

 

Ayn Rand

http://www.ayn-rand.com/ayn-rand-bio.asp

Most recent anyhow.

 

Yep, except he had the finest light cavalry the world has ever seen.

Cincinnatus, in the early Roman republic. Appointed dictator to defeat Rome's neighbors, did so, then promptly retired to his farm.

George was getting tired of the criticism and attacks from those he had considered friends during the revolution.

How so? He had no significant plan in my mind before his assassination, and from some of the things he told to southern governors in the southern states occupied before the end of the war, they wouldn't have to give blacks the vote. His 10% Plan is certainly not indicative of any determination on his part to have made reunion hard for the former secession states.

And colonization. But it was still Bismarck that had a lot to do with engineering those alliances.

 

George Washington because he was a sage. He did not seek the power of the presidency but served when asked and was not corrupted by power. Besides by most accounts everybody liked Martha and she picked him.