Who do you think is America's greatest Hero?
 

Abraham Lincoln is our greatest hero in my mind. He was a deeply thoughtful and moral man who was able to balance all the forces that threatened to tear the country apart. If he had lived reconstruction would surely have had a profoundly different face.

One interesting facet of his presidency I recently read about was his contribution to the creation of the transcontinental railroad which was largely built during the civil war. While he did free the slaves, his actions also meant the end of a way of life for the plains Indians. When finally completed the railroad bound the economic future of California with the rest of the country and spurred the settlement of the whole land that lay between the Mississippi and California.

He was a very complex man, an extremely controversial figure in his time, and a masterful politician. He probably did more to preserve the legacy of our forefathers while skillfully guiding the country through the most serious crisis in its history than any other American. He was also a very eloquent yet humble man with a great sense of humor as well.

Interesting question. I would have to go with George Washington. He was a great general with a strong personality that the country adopted. Although he was offered the equivalence a kingship, he turned it down in favor of the presidency. During a very formidable time in the America's history existed many great people (e.g. Jefferson, Hancock, Henry) and Washington stood above them. I'm not convinced of his effectiveness as President, but he did unite a very quarrelsome group of states following the rebuilding process after the Revolution. While Lincoln was a great president with strong ideas and ideals, Washington's prowess on the battlefield built his legacy to a higher level at the nation's inception.

Between
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and

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harvey dent!!!!

?http://blog.lib.umn.edu/raim0007/gwss1001/gijoe.jpg

My first thought was Bobby Kennedy, but really it has to be Dr. MLK Jr. His movement to establish equal rights is inspired and took a kind of bravery that's exceedingly rare.

Without Washington, the entire nation would look different, probably unimaginably so.

There would either have been a civil war much earlier (and with a better chance of succeeding), or someone would have seized power, or there would have been a foreign takeover.

We would have been Mexico, basically.

What Washington did (especially what he DIDN'T do) in controlling the power given to him, and in listening to and mediating between the opposing forces within the government set the stage for the rest of American history.

Lincoln probably comes second for his willingness to sacrifice everything for the idea that a divided United States (what an oxymoron) would destroy everything that was built by the founders and the subsequent generations. And if he had lived long enough to put his plans in place for rebuilding the South, he might deserve to be number one (John Wilkes Booth might be to blame for an awful lot of the political situation in the US in the ensuing century-and-a-half, especially when it comes to what happened in the South).

Once you get to number three, that is when it gets difficult. I could go with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., because of what he both did and tried to do in order to create true equality in a nation built upon that idea, or what up until that time was more of a joke.

Beyond that, there aren't too many famous (for lack of a better term) people who had enough of a direct effect to stand out from others like themselves.

If you want to go small scale, you could throw in Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who was instrumental in the Union victory at Gettysburg by holding the flank of the line around Little Round Top, one of the more famous "minor" moments in American history that could have caused huge changes if altered.

Benjamin Franklin

I'll second that one.

Superman.

:thumbsup:

i was going to say MacGyver... but

it seems that this isnt in Tilted Nonsense..

so im going to have to say that the greatest American in my mind would have to be Martin Luther King Jnr.

He was well respected and liked during and after his time.

History looks at some as despots, others as saviors, some as saints, but to me, MLK is a legend.

Malcolm X may be my favourite civil rights leader because of his tough stance and nature and his ability to criticize himself and go through personal growth in the meantime, but i wont let my prejudices get in the way to say that MLK was a much more liked and character and was accepted by much of the United States.

His groundbreaking thoughts have been unparalleled and his legacy lives to this day. If the means test for Americas Greatest Hero is Bravery, Charisma, and Acceptance during and after their time, then who can stand in the way of Martin Luther King Jnr?

I'll third this one. Without his brilliance, intelligence and charisma would the colonies even have decided it was a nation worth fighting for?

How could it NOT be Al Gore?

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Karl Marx, Claude Henri de Rouvroy comte de Saint-Simon, Isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

• George Read
• Caesar Rodney
• Thomas McKean
• George Clymer
• Benjamin Franklin
• Robert Morris
• John Morton
• Benjamin Rush
• George Ross
• James Smith
• James Wilson
• George Taylor
•John Adams
• Samuel Adams
• John Hancock
• Robert Treat Paine
• Elbridge Gerry
• Josiah Bartlett
• William Whipple
• Matthew Thornton
• Stephen Hopkins
• William Ellery
• Lewis Morris
• Philip Livingston
• Francis Lewis
• William Floyd
• Button Gwinnett
• Lyman Hall
• George Walton
• Richard Henry Lee
• Francis Lightfoot Lee
• Carter Braxton
• Benjamin Harrison
• Thomas Jefferson
• George Wythe
• Thomas Nelson, Jr.
• William Hooper
• John Penn
• Joseph Hewes
• Edward Rutledge
• Arthur Middleton
• Thomas Lynch, Jr.
• Thomas Heyward, Jr.
• Abraham Clark
• John Hart
• Francis Hopkinson
• Richard Stockton
• John Witherspoon
• Samuel Huntington
• Roger Sherman
• William Williams
• Oliver Wolcott
• Charles Carroll
• Samuel Chase
• Thomas Stone
• William Paca

The 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence.

Of course, he's Canadian ...

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Duh.....Ralph Hinkley

Everyone else is wrong.

Thank you and good night.
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George W. Bush for being brave enough to fighting American's greatest threat-terrorists-and not giving a damn what America thinks. He follows through with what he believes in, and that's truly heroic.

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Yep.

Nice to see everyone taking this thread seriously.

Git'r Done!

I was going to vote for Ralph Hinckley, but it's been done.

I vote for FDR.

I was being completely serious.

surely you didnt quote those off the top of your head

I don't think David McCullough could quote those off the top of his head :lol:

I have an extremely difficult time accepting Lincoln as Americas greatest hero, considering the numerous violations of the US constitution he committed.

I think I'd have to vote George Washington as well.

I want to vote for the guy who is the greatest current hero in the area of technology:

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Burt Rutan

Definitely NOT Abe Lincoln. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was also morally bankrupt, not a hero in my mind.

Perhaps Teddy Roosevelt. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson are good candidates.

Rosa Parks, Bruce Lee, Susan B Anthony, Malcolm X, Eleanor Roosevelt, Booker T Washington, Daniel Inouye, John McCain, to name a few.

All the brave men and women who serve/d our great nation in the armed forces.

All the brave men and women who serve/d in our great nation's law enforcement agencies and firefighting departments.

My brother.

Congratulations, you've just eliminated the entire historical population of the United States from consideration.

I'd say George III Rex of England.

If it wasn't for is mishandling of the political situation, America would be Canada II.

haha... i totally agree... he is the hero in my heart

I read on another thread that having ideas dismissed is a part of the give and play of being tilted. So I dismiss your ideas. John McCain, a big war hero who crashed 7 planes and gave info to the NVA.

Awesome! Very cool pick, an engineer... And a wikipedia entry to adjoin!


Wow, look at the fierce hair he's got goin on....

Definitely George Washington and innovating pioneers like Burt Rutan.

Personally, and most of all, my late father (Army Major - Vietnam)

Yeah he's got wicked cool hair & sideburns.
It doesn't hurt a hero's image any does it?

i vote for jesus...

you mean billy ray cyrus...right!?!?!

nah... since billy ray cut his hair, there doesn't seem to be anything jesusy about him.

i mean the jesus. the one everyone prays to in the buildings with the steeples.

yeah your right.. the jesus mullet is gone.

I didn't realize He was American.

not to split hairs, but the thread is "america's greatest hero." not "greatest american hero." maybe it's semantics, but my interpretation is who america idolizes/adores most. i don't even think jesus is real, but even so, he's got quite the following in the US...

Good point Harry. You may have won the prize for picking america's greatest hero.

I think Ill stick with the way the thread is going though and in addition to Ben, Ill raise you two - Lewis and Clark.

I think it's a close tie between Jefferson and Franklin. Though I do have a soft spot for L&C, their winter camp is just down the road from my house in Oregon.

It was intended as a silly quip. Nothing more.

well the way god speaks to president bush in giving him guidance, jesus may as well be american!

LOL, on other sites, that would be WWIII. Not for me, but you know...

On this one, we can take it with a grain of salt :)

Ben F. is my guy though, still. If I had to pick another more modern hero, it would be plural. I would say any and all school teachers that actually try to do the right thing. I know for a fact they have it tough, and yet they keep on trying.

Sacajawea was way hot.

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What makes America great is the idea that the power of government is derived from the consent of the governed. The original way that this idea was made real through the constitution supports some of the greater minds of the constitutional congress in the lead for this title. But the fact that Washington chose to limit his power in both scope and duration by setting the 2 term precedent may mean he is the greatest of many heros in American history.

Interesting question. I would have to go with George Washington.

For no reason whatsoever, I've been thinking somewhat hard on this question. Maybe it's because I'm really bored at work. Anyways, the first person I thought of was Bruce Lee. The only thing is, this thread is about American heroes. Bruce Lee, is of course Chinese (though an American citizen). I figured I should keep to those who were strictly born in the USA.

So, I go on to ask myself, what makes a hero? I guess there are 2 categories of heroes that I can think of. The first is what most people here have thought of - a man/woman who has done something huge for this country. The other was someone who people idolize. I could pick one from each category, but that's no fun. In the end, I would pick someone that people idolize - Michael Jordan. I pick him because he is someone that America's youth can learn a lot from. He makes many of them strive to be better at not only basketball (for those inclined), but also whatever else they want to be good at.

...Yay work.

Dude, Bruce Lee is American (born in San Francisco). As American as Michael Jordan or George Washington.

or as aussie as me!

i'd actually be quite offended if i wasnt thought of as australian just because my parents came from lebanon, even though i was born in australia.

to be denied something because of your ethnicity is bordering on racism. This IS about americas greatest hero, so if you're an american citizen, you shant be denied!

heck if jesus can be nominated, why cant bruce!

Then I take back what I said and pick Bruce Lee (I thought he was born in China for some reason).

My hero is ironpham.

Abe Frohman, the sausage king of Chicago.

I tip my hat to you sir.

Harriet Tubman.

Ayn Rand is a great American hero.

Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905. At age six she taught herself to read and two years later discovered her first fictional hero in a French magazine for children, thus capturing the heroic vision which sustained her throughout her life. At the age of nine, she decided to make fiction writing her career. Thoroughly opposed to the mysticism and collectivism of Russian culture, she thought of herself as a European writer, especially after encountering Victor Hugo, the writer she most admired.

During her high school years, she was eyewitness to both the Kerensky Revolution, which she supported, and—in 1917—the Bolshevik Revolution, which she denounced from the outset. In order to escape the fighting, her family went to the Crimea, where she finished high school. The final Communist victory brought the confiscation of her father's pharmacy and periods of near-starvation. When introduced to American history in her last year of high school, she immediately took America as her model of what a nation of free men could be.

When her family returned from the Crimea, she entered the University of Petrograd to study philosophy and history. Graduating in 1924, she experienced the disintegration of free inquiry and the takeover of the university by communist thugs. Amidst the increasingly gray life, her greatest pleasures were Viennese operettas and Western films and plays. Long an admirer of cinema, she entered the State Institute for Cinema Arts in 1924 to study screenwriting. It was at this time that she was first published: a booklet on actress Pola Negri (1925) and a booklet titled “Hollywood: American Movie City” (1926), both reprinted in 1999 in Russian Writings on Hollywood.

In late 1925 she obtained permission to leave Soviet Russia for a visit to relatives in the United States. Although she told Soviet authorities that her visit would be short, she was determined never to return to Russia. She arrived in New York City in February 1926. She spent the next six months with her relatives in Chicago, obtained an extension to her visa, and then left for Hollywood to pursue a career as a screenwriter.

On Ayn Rand’s second day in Hollywood, Cecil B. DeMille saw her standing at the gate of his studio, offered her a ride to the set of his movie The King of Kings, and gave her a job, first as an extra, then as a script reader. During the next week at the studio, she met an actor, Frank O’Connor, whom she married in 1929; they were married until his death fifty years later.

After struggling for several years at various nonwriting jobs, including one in the wardrobe department at the RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., she sold her first screenplay, “Red Pawn,” to Universal Pictures in 1932 and saw her first stage play, Night of January 16th, produced in Hollywood and then on Broadway. Her first novel, We the Living, was completed in 1934 but was rejected by numerous publishers, until The Macmillan Company in the United States and Cassells and Company in England published the book in 1936. The most autobiographical of her novels, it was based on her years under Soviet tyranny.

She began writing The Fountainhead in 1935 (taking a short break in 1937 to write the anti-collectivist novelette Anthem). In the character of the architect Howard Roark, she presented for the first time the kind of hero whose depiction was the chief goal of her writing: the ideal man, man as “he could be and ought to be.” The Fountainhead was rejected by twelve publishers but finally accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. When published in 1943, it made history by becoming a best-seller through word of mouth two years later, and gained for its author lasting recognition as a champion of individualism.

Ayn Rand returned to Hollywood in late 1943 to write the screenplay for The Fountainhead, but wartime restrictions delayed production until 1948. Working part time as a screenwriter for Hal Wallis Productions, she began her major novel Atlas Shrugged, in 1946. In 1951 she moved back to New York City and devoted herself full time to the completion of Atlas Shrugged.

Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was her greatest achievement and last work of fiction. In this novel she dramatized her unique philosophy in an intellectual mystery story that integrated ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics and sex. Although she considered herself primarily a fiction writer, she realized that in order to create heroic fictional characters, she had to identify the philosophic principles which make such individuals possible.

Thereafter, Ayn Rand wrote and lectured on her philosophy—Objectivism, which she characterized as “a philosophy for living on earth." She published and edited her own periodicals from 1962 to 1976, her essays providing much of the material for six books on Objectivism and its application to the culture. Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982, in her New York City apartment.

Every book by Ayn Rand published in her lifetime is still in print, and hundreds of thousands of copies are sold each year, so far totaling more than 25 million. Several new volumes have been published posthumously. Her vision of man and her philosophy for living on earth have changed the lives of thousands of readers and launched a philosophic movement with a growing impact on American culture.
Source: The Ayn Rand Institute: A Brief Biography of Ayn Rand

My boyfriend. Seven years in the Marine Corps, and made it home safely after 2 tours to Iraq.

Well played. Though its a well known fact that Abe was a fucking nihilist! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

I'm tempted to just +1 for Lincoln, since, regardless of his various flaws and mistakes, I do believe he tried the hardest of any American elected leader to do the right and the good, to never betray his public trust, and to serve the common people of the nation.

That said, I am going to put my vote in for FDR. We could use a little of his populist mojo right now....

Thats shocking, no one mentioned Oprah!!! so did a bit of googling since i'm not American but wanted to know who the top 10 greatest americans are, and they are as follows...

1 Ronald Reagan
2 Abraham Lincoln
3 Martin Luther King
4 George Washington
5 Benjamin Franklin
6 George W Bush
7 Bill Clinton
8 Elvis Presley
9 Oprah Winfrey
10 Franklin D Roosevelt

and waddya know...Oprah is one of them...so she's my choice :)

Where did you get this list?

I'm not buying Presley (or any entertainer) as a hero. That includes Oprah. I know she does charitable things- but greatest hero? Certainly not my vote. And Reagan, Bush and Clinton? Not in my book. As far as I'm concerned they laid a lot of the foundation that created the economic melt down we're in now.

Overall there's way too many politicians in the top ten for me. I could see FDR, Ike, Washington and Lincoln (no particular order here.) But Bush, Clinton and Reagan? Reagan thought trees produced more pollution then cars and ketchup was a vegetable. Say what you want about Clinton but to me his pardon list on the way out the door confirmed to me his true colors. I could care less who blew him when or where. And "W" seriously? I could go into why I think that's insane but I'm not sure there's enough space left on the internets.

Personally when I see these lists I'd like to see more people like Harriet Tubman, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, The Wright brothers or even Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.

I guess you have to be shot at to be in the top 3.

Every person on this list.

Except Duke Cunningham. Fuck him:grumpy:.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Reagan voted 'greatest American'

there ya go...but seriously, who am i...i'm a South African...so what do i know?:confused:

Well I'm opposed to putting entertainers on any list of "heroes." Unless it's a cast list for the TV show "Heroes."

As for being from South Africa I think we get educated largely on our geographic location. There's a thread on here somewhere discussing what the rest of the world is taught about the American Revolution. Turns out not much. At the same time I'm the product of the US public education system. I don't know jack about the history of most other countries. If you asked me any question regarding South African politics my only answer would likely be Nelson Mandela.

you slacker...

my answer would be nelson mandela and morgan tsvangarai..oh hang on he's zimbabwian.

ok so i lied..i do know a bit about sth africa. i have a lot of sth african friends so it rubs off. steve biko is another legend of sth africa that we dont hear about.