FDR
My votes, in no particular order and with reasons off the top of my head...
1. Wilson - Federal Reserve, income tax, Versailles, League of Nations, WWI.
2. Truman - National Security Act of 1947 creating the CIA.
3. Bush II -- oh wait, we're talking presidents.
3. Cheney - the tools (preemptive war) and theories (Unitary Executive) he's used to expand the power of the president and manipulate the reality most citizens are exposed to is more than a bit disturbing. The higher courts have been packed with long-time defenders of these ideas.
Going to change my vote again.
Ronald Reagan. For perpetrating a hoax on the American people by making them think he was champion of small government and a true libertarian.
and Thomas Jefferson. For perpetrating the biggest hoax in history by making people think he was a ("the"?) father of Freedom and individual rights. I should be so lucky as to have hundreds of slaves and still be considered the greatest advocate of freedom the world has known. Anyone want to volunteer for the job of being my slave?
At least the rest of them didn't try to hid it by pretending to be something they weren't (okay, they did so I'll go back to my second answer).
Jason Dean: tylerturtle: follow that school of thought only on the issue of national defense, not because I am some closet socialist hippie (which if you knew me, you would find that I am farthest from), but because I feel that war is a necessary evil including offensive wars. Wilson was a terrible president, but not for the war. You are a socialist.How do you think wars can be funded? Only with fiat money. Hippie? I wish. No, you're a bloodthirsty statist animal; the enemy of civilization. Hippies are just peaceful isolationists.Find me a war that can be funded without debasing the currency and your point was still be without merit, but less so. War is the health of the state, and warmongers like you are savage animals; the scum of the Earth.
tylerturtle: follow that school of thought only on the issue of national defense, not because I am some closet socialist hippie (which if you knew me, you would find that I am farthest from), but because I feel that war is a necessary evil including offensive wars. Wilson was a terrible president, but not for the war.
You are a socialist.
How do you think wars can be funded? Only with fiat money. Hippie? I wish. No, you're a bloodthirsty statist animal; the enemy of civilization. Hippies are just peaceful isolationists.
Find me a war that can be funded without debasing the currency and your point was still be without merit, but less so. War is the health of the state, and warmongers like you are savage animals; the scum of the Earth.
Dude! Spark up a fatty and chill!
ContumacySince87:You just can't beat a president that orders executions without trials, unleashes thugs called "generals" to rape and pilage, burns down entire states, and then makes people march through soldiers to get to the voting booths.
I thought we weren't talking about GW.
ContumacySince87:He also least tried to privatize social slavery
Can you at least admit that there are two sides to this question?
A Great Grandson of the Confederacy:Essentially the south decided to go to war because they realized that as free states grew in number the slave holding regions would be far out numbered by the free.
Pardon me, I realize I am showing my great ignorance by disagreeing with you, but the South did not decide to go to war, although individual Southern states decided to secede. The Constitution was an agreement entered into for mutual benefit of the states, and states retained the power to leave the contract should it no longer be beneficial. There was also a remedy for difficulties short of secession, namely nullification. When the Southern states nullified the tariff, Lincoln promised an invasion - for the sole purpose of collecting the tariff. He promised repeatedly that, if the tariff is collected, there will be no invasion, regardless of slavery.
To draw a parallel to your claim, imagine that a woman decides to leave her husband, and he in return beats her senseless. Will you inform us that she started the fight, that to blame him is wrong, and that "in actuality she was a hawk who started the fight by standing up to his abuses?"
A Great Grandson of the Confederacy:We must in order to enjoy liberty and the persuit of happiness accecpt its noble responsibilities. Society today does not have the moxie to govern itself, for Life Liberty and self governance require responsibility and self restraint, young men and women today do not understand this, to create anew the lofty ideals of our founding fathers we must accept that action without consequences cannot exist or be promoted, we must restrain our lower angels and raise our sons and daughters to do the same.
And how did we arrive in a world where young men and women behave like this? I suppose it has nothing to do with government schooling, or the welfare state and its destruction of the family - and so the solution cannot be to eliminate government, can it?
I know I'm late to the game here, but I have to choose Woodrow Wilson for reasons mentioned already.
Lincoln, for sure. Welfare statist, racist, anti-immigrant, warmonger, kleptocrat... does he have any redeeming feature(s)?
I agree that all of the presidents mentioned were definitely all very bad, but I would have to say Colonel Edward Mandall House. He was a president...wasn't he?
1) Lincoln - the Grandfather of big government and flagrant disregard for American lives.
2) FDR - he gave half of christian europe to the communists.
3) Woodrow Wilson - world democracy indeed
4) Jimmy Carter - let's show them what a Trilateral president can do!
5) Taft. Just kidding. Dubya. At least Wilson didn't giggle so much about it.
Harding or Nixon have to be considered the worst, while trying to control for one's ideology.
Without trying to control for one's ideological disposition, we gotta' say {WWI}lson, don't we????
LOL
Harding made my list of successful Presidents, #4 to be precise. He had no knowledge of Teapot Dome and in the scheme of things it was a relatively minor scandal anyhow. He kept his nose out of foreign entanglements and did basically NOTHING, other than to run the daily affairs of government. He did not try to solve America's problems, he kept the government out of peoples business. Sounds like a DAMN fine President in my book. :)
A lot of us liberal/libertarian folks forget what the Harding Presidency was really all about. It was never really about minimal gov't, although after Wilson it's easy to confuse it as being so designed. Harding was a man of average ability that stumbled into a job he neither really wanted nor was prepared for. Sort of a Dubya for the last century. As such an uninterested occupant, he had more scandals in his white house than any administration since......well, since this current abomination. If he, or dubya for that matter, were/are indeed unaware of what was going on around them well that still speaks to their ability. I cannot call that "successful" by any measure. And I don't give brownie points to someone for being to blissfully benign.
Anyway, didn't he support a world court just the same? I really think you're giving him too much credit for an ideology that just didn't exist - but I understand your perspective. After WorldWarWilson he can seem like a liberal at first blush.
The more I think about it though, the more he does remind me of Dubya. The only reason I didn't mention THAT clown is because my vision is a little blurred with disgust right now. :)
Byzantine,
"A moral stream cannot rise above its source."
Lincoln was the worst because his presidency fully realized the nationalism of Hamilton & Clay. TR, Wilson, FDR, et. al. merely carry the apostasy to further manifestations.
I'm glad to see someone finally fingered the false libertarians in the bunch. We can debate for hours as to which commie (FDR) or fascist (Lincoln & Bush 2) did the most dammage. However, we should all be particularly incensed when, under the banner of Liberty, a politician (or anyone else for that matter) promotes policies which are diametrically opposed to the concept of Liberty. I venture to say that we have not seen the last of such hoaxes.
While we're at it, let's add Jackson. No true libertarian could ever condone the Indian Removal Act.
And how about a few non-presidential political figures: Gingrich, McCain, Schwarzenegger, Greenspan, Bernacke. The Republican Party is as full of false libertarians as the Democratic Party is of closet commies. (Okay, now I'm just ranting and getting off subject...but it needed to be said.)
1. FDR
2. Wilson
3. Lincoln(would be #1, but he did free the slaves)
4. Obama
"The plans differ; the planners are all alike"
-Bastiat