Whom do you admire?

[Lurker]

Then why is he in the "most admired" person of the 20th century, then?

Yes, the man is an anti-semite, so is the rest of North America at that time, it's just that he had the loudest mouth piece. You can't also deny the fact that he changed the way we do business, that's why people admire him.

[Athrabeth]

Shamelessly ripping off ax's most excellent and practical rating system.

1=most admired and 4=not admired at all

1. Mother Teresa--3
2. Martin Luther King, Jr.--1
3. John F. Kennedy--4
4. Albert Einstein--1
5. Helen Keller--2
6. Franklin D. Roosevelt--2
7. Billy Graham--3
8. Pope John Paul II--3
9. Eleanor Roosevelt--2
10. Winston Churchill--2
11. Dwight Eisenhower--2
12. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis--4
13. Mahatma Gandhi--1
14. Nelson Mandela--1
15. Ronald Reagan--4
16. Henry Ford--4
17. Bill Clinton--3
18. Margaret Thatcher--4

In place of the five people that I personally have no admiration for whatsoever, I will submit my own list of five "1's":

Lester B. Pearson
Sylvia Ashton-Warner
Rachel Carson
Annie Sullivan
Cesar Chavez

if you go to countries like India, the Middle East etc... it's difficult to "market" birth control pills when what you are selling violates their religion and culture. Even the Catholic Church has been educating families with regards to natural birth control in this particular countries, yet people don't seem to buy that.

I don't think I could name any religion in Asia that would consider birth control a violation of its tenets (and that includes Islam). It is purely, IMO, the economic/cultural pressures of poverty, disease, illiteracy, under-employment, and ingrained masogyny that are the issue. In areas like Kerala State in India, with its socialist government's support of universal public education and health care (including birth control clinics) the birth rate is on par with that of "developed countries", as is its literacy rate. It is still a very poor area of the world, and is now, I believe, struggling with a "brain drain" of many of its best and brightest because of the government's historical rejection of industrialization, BUT......its women are not aborting female fetuses, its girls are not being turned away from higher education, and its children are not dying of preventable diseases.

When women are considered the chattels of their fathers and husbands, unworthy of education, incapable of independent thinking, used or abused at will by men who face few, if any consequences for their actions, powerless, voiceless, and faceless -- this is when birthrates soar (and female life expectancy plummets). This is also true in places where disease lurks like an ever-present shadow in people's lives, and yes, also where survival may depend on how many reasonably healthy, young bodies can scratch some kind sustenance from the depleted, gasping earth.

No, overpopulation is not a problem if people are not greedy. It ties in with what we are doing to our enviroment

Today, tens of thousands of dirt-poor Brazilian farmers slash and burn forests to grow meagre crops to feed their ever-growing families, only to watch the thin layer of topsoil wash away during the next rainy season, forcing them to move further into the forest to repeat the cycle of destruction and depletion. And right next door to them, some big "agri-corp" is doing exactly the same thing in order to inflict the land with unfathomable numbers of cattle to be consumed somewhere down the line by patrons of a multitude of fast food joints and fancy-schmancy restaurants. So to my mind, I guess it's BOTH overpopulation and greed that's the problem here.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Then why is he in the "most admired" person of the 20th century, then?

I would say that it is because most people don't realize just how virulent a hate-monger he was, and because the history books laud him as some kind of American hero.

Yes, the man is an anti-semite, so is the rest of North America at that time

I'm sorry, but that is simply not true. Yes, there was a lot of anti-Semitism at the time (there still is), but to say that "the rest of North America" was just as anti-Semitic as Henry Ford was is just plain false.

You can't also deny the fact that he changed the way we do business, that's why people admire him.

I don't think his business practices were particularly admirable either, particularly in regard to his labor relations practices, but that is another matter. Even if I thought his influence on the way we do business was a good thing, it would still be a drop in the bucket compared the amount of hateful propoganda that he was responsible for spreading.

There are very few people that I think are less admirable then Henry Ford.

[truehobbit]

Ooh, I had no idea you were just to rate people on a given list (hadn't read the first post before). Ok, I can do that.

I don't like simple number ratings, so I'll use words.

The interesting thing about this list are the very weird choices it contains. It's very strange to find all those American Presidents' names there. For many, I hardly know what they did that should make them either admirable or the opposite.

If there's nothing to admire, I simply say "no". If there is something I try to qualify the degree.

Oh, and maybe I should add that as a historian, I'm extremely unlikely to admire anyone without qualifications. Which doesn't mean I don't admire people, just that I'm unable to admire anyone with pure enthusiasm.

1. Mother Teresa - admire very much, but have a few reservations due to some things I've heard about her value system, but don't know enough to form an opinion, so the admirable things weigh more

2. Martin Luther King, Jr. - admire very much (but only know the general story; which means that it's not a well-thought-out opinion)

3. John F. Kennedy - nope. Not much to admire there - just a politician, which means inherently not very admirable. I hardly know anything about him beyond that to form an opinion from, I'm sorry he got shot, but that doesn't make him admirable

4. Albert Einstein - very admirable, I think. For a scientist, he had a good sense of humour, and AFAIK good ethical beliefs (which is the most important factor for my admiration). I also like the fact that he was a musician.

5. Helen Keller - admire very much, for endurance in adversity - but wouldn't her teacher be deserving of some of the admiration, too?

6. Franklin D. Roosevelt - Politicians are probably the people I'm most wary to admire, but just now all I can remember having heard about his ideas is entirely positive - so, he gets a "yes".

7. Billy Graham - who? seriously, I've never even heard that name before this list! (Is it the inventor of Graham crackers? I could google, but fact is there's a name on the list I've never even heard. )

8. Pope John Paul II - admire very much, for top performance in a hard job, good-heartedness and good-will and endurance in adversity. So, though disagree with some of his views, this is probably the longest list of admirable qualities.

9. Eleanor Roosevelt - from the little I know, yes, someone to admire

10. Winston Churchill - definite "no". A successful politician, bright (or cynical?) enough to understand what Hitler was, but mostly characterised by ideas we'd call "menschenverachtend" in German (clumsily rendered as "contemptuous of people")

11. Dwight Eisenhower - nope - I don't admire military staff, and I don't know what he did as a President.

12. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis - nope (any reasons to admire her?)

13. Mahatma Gandhi - admire very much, though as with M.L. King, I only know the popular story

14. Nelson Mandela - some admirable actions, but also some reprehensible ones. While I think it's still ok to admire the admirable actions, the unqualified admiration you sometimes find people giving him is off-putting.

15. Ronald Reagan - big "no"

16. Henry Ford - who? (which means " probably no", but I can't say I connect any policies with the name)

17. Bill Clinton - an ok guy for a politician, I've heard many good things, but also some not so good, and don't know enough to make a detail analysis - so he gets an "ok"

18. Margaret Thatcher - big "no"

In place of the five people that I personally have no admiration for whatsoever, I will submit my own list of five "1's":

Oh, I like that idea!

(I'm afraid there are too many "no"s on my list, and too few people I admire, though, to replace them all )

Lester B. Pearson
Sylvia Ashton-Warner
Rachel Carson
Annie Sullivan
Cesar Chavez

I've never heard any of these names!

Thinking about my own "replacement list" - back soon.

[yovargas]

Henry Ford - who?

The guy who more or less invented the first cars? I'd think he'd be well known outside of the US, no?

(I don't think that's why he's admired (or maybe it is) but that is why he's famous.)

[JewelSong]

Annie Sullivan was Helen Keller's teacher.

Rachel Carson wrote "Silent Spring" and was instrumental in environmental studies and the abolition of DDT and other pesticides.

Billy Graham is a minister and evangelist.

John F Kennedy was more than "just a politician" although, of course he was that as well.

Ditto Eisenhower.

Good thread, BTW.

[truehobbit]

The guy who more or less invented the first cars? I'd think he'd be well known outside of the US, no?

Ooh - ok, thanks! You guys had a President by the name of Ford, too, didn't you? So, I thought that was him.

The automobile-Ford didn't invent cars, he made them available for the generality of people by inventing new production methods.

I agree that that's not really a basis to form admiration (or the opposite) on. You'd have to know things about the ethical ideas behind his enterprise or so.

Annie Sullivan was Helen Keller's teacher.

Ooh - cool! Thanks, Jewel. Ath and I had the same idea, then.

I said "just a politician" because that's all I can safely say I know about him. In his case, I've heard good things and bad things, but haven't studied the details sufficiently to understand either. In Kennedy's case the bad things would seem to be more, but as I'm aware that I know as good as nothing about him, I'm not making any judgement apart from saying he was a politician. And because, just as with any politician, I've heard both good and bad things and because I'm wary of politicians until proved wrong, he gets a "no".

[Voronwë the Faithful]

hobby, César Chávez was an American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers. His work led to numerous improvements for migrant workers. He would definitely be on my list too (not surprisingly, so would all the other people on Ath's list).

[axordil]

As an aside--Henry Ford was also extremely neurotic. He used to keep an axe next to his bed in case he had to chop his way out of his mansion because of a fire.

OTOH, a lot of people on the list had their own neuroses and peccadilloes, so that in itself is not a disqualifier. The virulent antisemitism is. Example: he started his own newspaper in Dearborn, MI so he could publish the infamous Czarist hoax Articles of the Elders of Zion in it.

As far as business practices go, he wasn't much worse than others of his ilk in the period. He also wasn't any better, including as a capitalist. He was famously inflexible on some ideas ("my customers can have a car any color they want, so long as it's black"), which led to companies like General Motors displacing Ford's supremacy as the 20s and 30s wore on.

[Maria]

I don't think I admire any public figures.

Well, except maybe Jim the Wonder Dog.

Edit: and maybe Houdini...

edit 2: and definitely Miyamoto Musashi - a samurai who wrote The Three Rings in 1599, and Dr. Jigoro Kano who invented Judo in 1882.

[truehobbit]

Voronwë, thanks - sounds like someone who'd make it to my list, too.

Yikes, I have to find 9 replacements!

I find that I admire a lot of people for smaller things, but that I'm unclear what sort of admiration (or rather, what sort of achievement to admire) is looked for in this thread.

It seems the list only contains 20th century names, so that makes it a bit more difficult.
But, ok, always remembering that admiration comes more easily with lack of detail knowledge, in no particular order I'd say I'd admire the following people for what I know about them:

Willy Brandt (got to have some politician in my list for the many I chucked out ), as the German chancellor who worked towards reconciliation with Poland and Russia and towards stronger democratic values

Queen Elizabeth II, for top performance in an unenviable job she never chose and can't quit from

Astrid Lindgren, as author and advocate of children's rights and violence-free education

Bertha von Suttner as peace activist

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for resistance against injustice and inhumanity and making a difficult decision in reconciling the ultimate opposition with his faith



Phew, running out of steam. Will add more as I think of more.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

As far as business practices go, he wasn't much worse than others of his ilk in the period.

I would say that he was worse, particularly in regards to labor relations. In 1937, after GM and Chrysler both negotiated contracts with the unions, Ford announced: "We'll never recognize the United Automobile Workers Union or any other union." In May of that year, 60 UAW members and some local journalists were jumped by a large contingent of Ford security goons outside a plant in Dearborn, Michigan. One of the union men died four months later from his injuries. The incident was widely reported in the news media, and was known as "The Battle of the Overpass." During the fallout, the National Labor Relations Board found Ford Motor Company in violation of the Wagner Act, which jeopardized millions of dollars in federal contracts. Still, Ford would continue to hold out for another four years, before finally giving in. Ford Motor Company became the last Detroit automaker to recognize the UAW.

[axordil]

VtF--

Oh, he was a recidivist when it came to union relations, without a doubt. I was thinking more along the lines of what he did to other businesses.

In a way he acted more like the last tycoon of the Gilded Age, as opposed to one rooted in the 20th Century.

Ang--

One thing that Bill Gates and Mother Teresa have in common is that they could have acted otherwise than they did without the people they associated with thinking the worse of them. While it is not uncommon for the very wealthy to donate large sums of money to charity, a lot of them don't, or do so in ways that don't make waves, or wait until their wills.

[vison]

Henry Ford invented nothing. He did put the assembly line process to good use, and while he was virulently anti-union, he also believed that if he paid his workers a good wage (which he did), they would be able to buy his cars. He would certainly not be on my list.

Lester B. Pearson was a former UN Secretary General, Prime Minister of Canada, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957. A great man.

Dwight Eisenhower should not be dismissed simply because he was a military man. He was, though, and he was brilliant. He was in command of the Allies in the last stages of WW II and his gift for organization was instrumental in the success of the invasion on D-Day and the eventual defeat of the Nazis. He was a Republican, but about as far removed from the sort of "Republican" president now in office as is possible to imagine. He warned of the "military-industrial complex" and guess what? He proved to be correct.

I would include Cesar Chavez, and Rachel Carson. Annie Sullivan was a remarkable woman, but I guess I'm going with people who had a significant effect on nations, rather than merely personal accomplishments. (But I ain't taking my friend Christine off the list, you all would admire her, too, if you knew her.)

I put Harry Trueman on my list because he had the guts to end the war with Japan by using the atomic bomb. I realize that is not going to be a popular notion, but I stick with it. He did what was necessary. Not only that, his use of the Bomb, as president of a free nation, served as a salutory lesson for the whole world about the dangers of the atomic age. No other nation, IMHO, could have done that. And it was a desperately needed lesson.

QE II is a very nice woman, etc., but while she herself is probably full of integrity, the rest of the clan are pernicious parasites whose retirement to private life is, by this subject of the Crown, to be devoutly longed for.

Margaret Sanger is on my list because she was the champion of Birth Control. She was not perfect, and had some ideas that make the hair of modern persons stand on end, but in the long run, I admire her courage and pertinacity.

Excellent post, Athrabeth. And so apt, given the circumstances of women in Afghanistan, for instance. Good article in today's Sun. Education of women is the sure way to prosperity and peace, which is likely why it is so feared by the men who run things.

[Athrabeth]

In place of the five people that I personally have no admiration for whatsoever, I will submit my own list of five "1's":

Oh, I like that idea!

(I'm afraid there are too many "no"s on my list, and too few people I admire, though, to replace them all )

Lester B. Pearson
Sylvia Ashton-Warner
Rachel Carson
Annie Sullivan
Cesar Chavez

I've never heard any of these names!

Jewel and Voronwë have already covered Rachel Carson, Annie Sullivan and Cesar Chavez.

Sylvia Ashton-Warner was a writer and educator from New Zealand. I saw her lecture at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver in 1971, and it had such a profound effect on me, I changed direction in my studies and decided to earn my degrees in Education. Her book, Teacher, was, and remains, one of the most influential sources for my own educational philosophy. It is a wonderful work, and IMHO, should be required reading for all aspiring teachers.

Lester B Pearson was a Prime Minister of Canada. His minority government in the 60's introduced universal health care, the Canada Pension Plan, and laid the groundwork for French to be declared an official language and Canada a bilingual country. Our distinctive Maple Leaf flag is one of his legacies as well. Pearon also won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in helping to settle the Suez Crisis in the 1950's. He was responsible for the establishment of the United Nations Emergency Peace Keeping Force. All in all.....quite a guy!

After having written about Pearson, I realize I really should add another Canadian to the list of those I admire: Tommy Douglas, the leader of the socialist party during the time of Pearson's minority government.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

J.R.R. Tolkien

[axordil]

I had three 4's on my list...lemme see, who would I replace them with...

Hard question for me. Some of the people who have done some of the most admirable things of the 20th century also did some really crappy things. Examples: LBJ signed the civil rights act, but kept us in Vietnam. Teddy Roosevelt helped end the Russo-Japanese War, signed the Pure Food and Drug Act, and made the National Park system what it is (or should be) today, but also helped get us into the Spanish-American War and developed gunboat diplomacy.

[Aravar]

J.R.R. Tolkien

While I admire his works, I admire him no more than I would any other Oxford Don, many of whom are admirable, but compared with, say Churchill their impact is not great: without men like Churchill or Alanbrooke whom I mentioned, we would never have had LOTR.

In a way, I think, JRRT's 'Strider I am to one fat man in Bree..' recognises this.

[axordil]

Aravar--

You have a point. It's hard to escape the fact that that list of 18 is far and away deominated by political leaders and heads of state. I do wonder though...is greatness really the same thing as being admirable? And the answer to that has to rest in WHY we admire someone. Is it what they've done, or who they are?

When I saw VtF's suggestion, I must admit my reaction was one of "I like his stuff, but does that make me admire the person?" And that's often the case: we can admire what someone has done, created, accomplished, but do we know the person well enough to admire them? Conversely, we know a lot of people in day-to-day life who are fine, exemplary folks, but whose accomplishments are not going to land them in Who's Who. They may not have a particular legacy that future generations will point to in awe, but on the other hand, but is that what makes someone admirable?

It's an open question for me.

[yovargas]

The 'People I admire' concept seems to overlap witht the 'Heroes' concept 100% for me. It's definately based on what I know of who they are as opposed to what they've done. Mine is a short list:

MLK
Bill Watterson (creator of Calvin & Hobbes, as explained in the Heroes thread)
My sister


That's about it. I guess when I think of 'admire' I think of 'people I want to live like' and that's not a whole lotta people despite there being lots of people around (such as all my board favorites) who I think are great people.