Murdering smart people by the tens of millions - not a great thing.

Or is that too controversial

My picks:

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt, U.S. President 1933-1945 (My personal favorite here)
-Winston Churchill, English Prime Minister 1940-1945, 1951-1955 (Dates are OK?)
-David Ben-Gurion, Israeli Prime Minister 1948-1963 (That's going to raise questions)
-Mahatma Ghandi, Indian Spiritual Leader 19-16-1948 (Rough estimate

FDR... so much has been said on him, I think I'll leave that to one side for now...

Ditto Churchill...

Ben-Gurion... that's not going to endear me to any Arabs here, I'm sure. But I'm a Zionist, I believe in Israel and its right to exist, and Ben-Gurion is here for three reasons: helping Israel win the war (and by help I mean he was almost like their Washington), for currying that US-Israeli alliance that, for the best and for the worst has kept Israel afloat through so much, and giving Israel a strong leadership and a face to the world... for both the best and for the worst, we don't have Israel, the state of Arab nations today, and indeed much of what is now the Middle East without Ben-Gurion winning the war and creating the land Jews waited 2,000 years for (well, it's not quite what we wanted, we'd liek some actual peace and not to always have be the bad guys... but it IS a start...)

-Ghandi. That says it all- when you not only inspire ONE nation to throw off opression and demonstrate peacefully, but in fact end up influencing TWO to do that (Dr. King in America... no Ghandi, perhaps no Civil Rights movement as we know it) you earn a place with the greatest leaders and greatest MEN EVER.


Honorable mentions:

-Theodore Roosevelt (He'll be fine, he already has his face in stone with leaders) ;)
-Woodrow Wilson (If the League of Nations HAD worked out... plus it hurts his status that he was a racist.)
-Juan/Eva Peron (controversial, but if you're going to include a fighter and, admittedly, a warmonger of sorts in Ben-Gurion, the Perons don't look terrible... especially given the state of South America TODAY after revolts...)
-Princess Diana (A lot of good charity work there... and the world could use more of it...)
-Ronald Reagan (I'll admit it, he did, for as much as he screwed over future generations with all that spending, do great things in his time...)

Hey... a lot of spending... great things in his time... gave pretty speeches... loathed by other party...

Didn't someone like that just win the Nobel Peace Prize? ;)

Mao?

Wow- and I thought I was a bit extreme with Ben-Gurion or the Perons...

Why not pick Saddam or Stalin along with Mao? ;)

To go along with Barak Obama, and all the great things he's accomplished during his short time in office,... I'd have to pick Karl Marx, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chávez!

Oh give me a break, rojo-

Why do you have to hate him so? Why does America ALWAYS have to be so divisive like this... this bickering makes us look like shit in front of everyone else!

And he didn't sask for the Prize- and he doesn't deserve it, and even HE said he doesn't deserve it and doesn't know why they gave it to him.

So why not get off his back and actually try and help this country rather than attacking a leader who has done nothing to warrant such hostility (other than being so opposed to everything we've been the last eight years... but then I think the world would agree we really haven't been the America we're capable of and should be the last eight years...)

And he is NOT a communist, get over yourself...

"Why does America ALWAYS have to be so divisive like this... this bickering makes us look like shit in front of everyone else!"

You mean those countries that collaborated with fascism?

Yeah I'm cool with looking bad in front of them

very cool

because I do not hate Jews :teach:

Hitler!

There, thread successfully Godwin'd. We can go now.

Richard Nixon (to annoy the Kennedy fanclub)
Camilla Parker Bowles (to annoy the Princess Diana fanclub)
Francois Mitterand (to annoy the Gaullists)
Duran Duran (to annoy everybody)

I would put Otto von Bismarck on there, simply because he is my all-time favourite historical figure.

yeah Otto! And to Acosmist: do you not care that America is basically the most hated country in the world, and under Bush we almost looked like a fucking Fascist Government (in the extreme blind nationalism and militarism columns, not like Germany with a National Socialist Party or anything... even though some crazy Republican evangelicals equate to Nazis for me). It should not matter in from of whom we looks bad. And at Rojo: Hugo wasn't all that bad, and I think Karl Marx was a genius (of course Castro is questionable) so what is your point??? Are you going to follow the Repub lemmings off the fear cliff like a brainless fool? Do you believe everything your told? I bet you listen to O'Reilly and Limbaugh...

So I guess we really are calling people Nazis now...

There goes godwin's law...

Mahatma Gandhi.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso).
Kofi Annan.

Not Churchill. He was racist.
Not Wilson. He was racist.
Not Franklin Roosevelt. He was racist.
No presidents.
No dictators.


Wow... that was a hard list to compile. Hardly anyone is flawless enough to merit the list. A lot of pople did a lot of good, but most of these people also did bad.