Following up an a BBC story about the worst Britons of all time, Alexandra at All Things Beautiful has a post up challenging bloggers to come up with their list of the worst Americans of all time. In no particular order, here’s my own list:
1. Benedict Arnold — how can you not include the man whose name has become synonymous with treason ? He makes the top of the list because he tried to strangle the birth of American freedom before it had even left the cradle.
2. Aaron Burr — another member of the founding generation who turned out to be a traitor.
3. James Buchanan — the bachelor President who bungled his way through four years in office and left America on the verge of destruction.
4. Norman Thomas — the founding father of American socialism
5. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg — traitors, pure and simple
6. Alger Hiss — another traitor
7. Lyndon Johnson — as if lying to the American people about Vietnam weren’t bad enough, he also set in motion the tax and spend philosophy that lives with us to this day.
8. Richard Nixon — Nixon makes it on the list partly because of Watergate, Cointelpro, the Pentagon Papers case, Daniel Elsberg, wage and price controls, and the largest expansion of federal bureaucracy since his predecessor.
9. Jimmy Carter — A bungler extraordinaire who belonged in the Peace Corps, not the White House.
10. Timothy McVeigh — Sorry Tim, killing innocent people is wrong no matter what your cause might be.
