Greatest Twenty of the Twentieth, as compiled from Conservative bloggers

John Hawkins’ [Right Wing] Bloggers Select The Greatest Figures Of The 20th Century is up now. A few of the selections are noteworthy.

FDR came in at #11 on the Righties’ Greatest list, in spite of tying for 17th place on the Righties’ Worst Figures In American History list. So I guess bringing the country out of The Depression and winning World War II were sufficiently great to offset the massive evil of …? What? Social Security? The WPA? Anyway, kudos to the 9 out of 31 participating Right-Wing bloggers who were able to put orthodoxy aside for a moment and really think about what the world would look like today had America, under FDR, not entered and won World War II.

There are likely to be a few other common names. I predict that number one on the conservative list, Winston Churchill, will either tie with FDR or be a close second on the Liberal list. Eisenhower is likely to make the tail end of the Liberal list. MLK, Jonas Salk, George Patton, Ghandi, Albert Einstein, and Watson and Crick will likely also reappear on the Liberal list. I give Teddy Roosevelt and Edison, both on the Conservative list, an outside chance of showing up on the Liberal list. I considered both of them, but decided their accomplishments were too much in the 19th century for this list. TR was close, but first became president in the last year of the 19th century, though he was elected in 1904.

Rather unlikely to resurface on the Liberal list are Billy Graham, Milton Friedman, Thatcher, and Reagan. The only figure on the Righties’ best list who is also on the Left’s worst list is Ronald Reagan, no surprise there. I thought Kissinger had an outside shot of matching Reagan on that feat, but no.

One other interesting feature: no single figure in history made every conservative blogger’s–Churchill came closest with 26 of 31 possible votes. Upon further inspection, the Worst Figure to Liberals, McCarthy, only got 26 out of 39 possible votes. The “winner” of the Worst Figure to Conservatives poll was Julius Rosenberg, and he only got 20 of 39 possible votes. I suspect that these numbers overstate the heterogeneity of opinion. The rules that Hawkins set forth said “list up to twenty” figures, so a fair number of bloggers probably replied with only a few selections. If everyone polled had come up with twenty names total, for example, surely every best list (both sides) would include Churchill.

AB