The Greatest American....

America’s Greatest American!

On Discovery channel this month there are several programs all specials, hosted by NBC’s Matt Lauer. He is profiling what we the voters have said were our choices for the Greatest American. He had an original list of 100, and narrowed it down to the top 25, that once again we the viewers have said were our top 25 picks.

Here is the list that we have selected…

Remember these are the GREATEST AMERICAN EVER list.

Mohammed Ali
Lance Armstrong
Neil Armstrong
George W. Bush
George Washington
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Thomas Jefferson
Abraham Lincoln
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Ronald Reagan
William Jefferson Clinton
Walt Disney
Bill Gates
Thomas Alva Edison
The Wright Brothers
Henry Ford
Alfred Einstein
Eleanor Roosevelt
Benjamin Franklin
The Reverend Billy Graham
The Reverend Martin Luther King
Elvis Presley
Bob Hope
Oprah Winfrey
Rosa Parks

While all of these people may have affected the lives of those who were around them, I am not at all sure in my mind that with a possible few exceptions, any of them would or SHOULD be considered THE GREATEST AMERICAN.

What should the criteria be for such a title? Popularity? The Way they Affected Our lives? The good that they did to others? The impact they had on the rest of the World?
The wars they Won?

This evening, Bob and Donna were available and no TV was on, so We cooked outside, and sat around the table on the deck discussing who we thought should or should not be on the list. We also discussed WHY they should or should not be on the list.

I went to google and googled the 100 greatest Americans and got the official website and printed out the 100 and we sat and discussed each in length.

The first thing we did is immediately throw out any professional athlete. There is no way they could even be considered the GREATEST AMERICAN. The next thing we did was try to come up with good quality criteria for what constitutes THE GREATEST AMERICAN. In perusing the list, we noticed that there were no Native Americans on it anywhere. (Jim Thorpe excepted) Then we wondered why there were no Canadians, or Mexicans, or South Americans listed. Is the GREATEST AMERICAN just limited to the US of A? It appears so. With that in mind we set upon trying to think of people that should have been on the list that were not, but first we needed to get back to criteria!

We thought that they must have first done no harm to anyone. Which pretty much eliminated everyone. SO then we decided that the main criteria should be that they made a contribution to society that benefited the country and preserved it for the future generations.

After much discussion, and argument, we narrowed it down to a few people that we thought warranted being on the list. Each person already on it was dissected and discussed, and either agreed upon or tossed off. While we all agreed that such as Rosa Parks should be on the list, we did not think she made as much of a contribution to Society as say MLK. SO she was tossed. Then one by one we did the same with all of them.

John Adams was added, Ben Franklin was kept, Thomas Jefferson was kept, Eleanor Roosevelt was kept, Theodore Roosevelt was kept, Thurgood Marshall was added, and Sacagawea was added, and Rachel Carson was added along with Robert E. Lee. There were minor players also, but these few folks for the most part are the ones that we three agreed deserved the title of GREATEST AMERICAN.

No entertainers, no athletes, no business men, no religious person, and few politicians. Only one warrior, Robert E. Lee, and only for the contribution he made to actually saving life and preserving the Country, by surrendering to US Grant. We thought he was a much maligned forgotten person in the naming of these people.

You ought to try this with some of your friends, and see where you get. We tried to keep popularity out of it entirely, and thus we felt that having the average TV viewer vote was a travesty. We thought that the ones who voted would not necessarily represent the average THINKING person in America.

After the baked beans were eaten and the hamburgers devoured, we got down to the last few and came up with OUR vote for the GREATEST AMERICAN who ever lived.

Any idea who we chose? Who would you choose? And why? My answer later on this week.