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Robert E. Lee. Because I find him one of the most fascinating people in history. I can't explain why really. Probably because I identify with his concept of honour and the code he lived his life by. I wish I could emulate it and also emulate the response he got.
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quote:Originally posted by Dr Strangelove: Robert E. Lee. Because I find him one of the most fascinating people in history. I can't explain why really. Probably because I identify with his concept of honour and the code he lived his life by. I wish I could emulate it and also emulate the response he got.
And lead a damned rebellion striving for states rights over the federal government!?
I sometimes wonder if Robert E Lee was as golden as he is portrayed but I honestly have yet to see any reason to doubt it.
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Frances Kelsey: Where did the drive and the strength to buck such a huge system come from?
VI Lenin: Why did people follow him down such a radical and terror-filled road?
David Ben-Gurion: How did he manage to marshal so much power and energy to get so far with a goal in one lifetime?
Margaret Sanger: How did she (internally) and others (externally) make sense of and deal with so many deep contradictions within one person and one broad movement?
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Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi, because I know the outlines of his life, but would like to delve deeper into his writings, his "campaigns", and his motivations.
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I think it's interesting (but not really surprising) that we seem drawn to study "good" leaders or people we admire more often than "bad" leaders, or people we disapprove of. At least for me, I would find spending the time and energy to really profile someone rather hard to stomach if I disliked him or her, my interest in Lenin notwithstanding.
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Adlai Stevenson, John Steinbeck, and Hubert Humphrey, all three exhibited clear and compelling moral vision.
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Blackblade, a friend of mine got me "The Recollections and Memoirs of Robert E. Lee" for my birthday. It's a collection of his letters, etc, and is incredibly interesting. It's not so much his cause that I'm interested in, but rather how he went about supporting it, and his character.
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Ataturk— how can anyone change an entire nation in such a short time. Sure, he did some truely awful things, but also some really great ones.
Churchill— A person I would rather emulate than Lee, even more outstanding in his personal life than his public life.
MLK— an intellectual who never ceased to be the peoples' man, while not appealing to their baser instincts.
Caesar and Napoleon— both lusted for power, both were dictators and murderers, but their capacity to lead men, and to lead themselves, cannot be questioned.
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Ronald Reagan, his leadership and vision led to the dismantling of the USSR, the greatest threat to, and violator of, human rights and personal liberty in the 20th Century.
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Pel, are you saying that Churchill's personal life was more outstanding than Lee's? Because I will have to respectfully disagree with you there.
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Benjamin Franklin has always fascinated me. But I don't know if you would say he was a leader. But he sure impacted a lot of things. The lives of Franklin and also that of Da Vinci have always been a fascination, (because they knew such a wide variety of things) and I wish could have met them.
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I second Robert. E Lee. Not only did he have an interesting career, he had an interesting personality.
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I second Churchill, and I can't believe I forgot to mention George Washington, without whom there'd probably be no United States today.
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I was going to say Da Vinci also, but I didn't know if he qualified as a leader. Certainly one of the more fascinating individuals in history though.
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Blayne Bradley
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Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Churchill, Yammamoto Isokuro(sp?), Erwin Rommel, Sir Willfred Laurier (Prime Minister of Canada wiki "Tin Pot Navy") all possess alot of charisma and as such the encredible ability to lead men through both the good times and bad times. If only Lenin hadn't have died so soon, and Mao haven't had died so late.
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"Pel, are you saying that Churchill's personal life was more outstanding than Lee's?"
A thousand times yes. Lee was a man who could be admired but never liked, Churchill could be, and was, both. Churchill had a very interesting— in a good way— personal life, particularly during the wilderness years. He was a kind, funny, ceaslessly energetic man.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Lenin, Mao, [...] all possess alot of charisma and as such the encredible ability to lead men through both the good times and bad times.
I think this should be lead through good times and into bad times.
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To each his own I suppose. Churchill had charisma while Lee had honour. I personally would choose honour over charisma, but, as I said, to each his own.
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Ooouuu boy you gettin my hackles up. You obviously have not studied Lee. I confess, I haven't studied Churchill nearly to the extent I have studied Lee, but trust me, you reveal your ignorance to call him an idiot without morals.
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John Adams, without whom there would have been no United States.
-o-
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, . . . all possess alot of charisma and as such the encredible ability to lead men through both the good times and bad times.
That's not charisma, that's guns.Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Blayne Bradley
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hahaha which history book did you read last I check ALL OF THEM were heavily outnumbered AND outgunned in their worst moments it took charisma and the ability to lead and inspire confidence inthose who followed them to achieve victory against all odds.
Mao: in 1945 500,000 vs 4 Million Lenin: Had to deal not only with the White Russians but the Americans, Brittish, French and throw in the Poles for good measure. Castro: The Cuban governemnt under Batista also outnumbered him and achieveing the ire of the USA I think also stackd things agsinst him. Ho Chi Minh: Taking on first the Japanese, then the French and then the Americans takes balls and quite frankly even if manpower wise he had more "guns" the total amount of firepower possessed by the Americans totally outnumbered anything the North Vietnamese Army could field with Chinese and Soviet help.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, . . . all possess alot of charisma and as such the encredible ability to lead men through both the good times and bad times.
quote:Originally posted by Nighthawk: ...and, if you pay attention, you can hear the gentle "clak-clak-clak" as the rollercoaster approaches the summit...
This thread's going to get fun. I can tell.
Wow, Nighthawk, I'm impressed. That was downright literary. I want to use it in a story or something!
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Great Civil War trivia question: Who is the only person to ever graduate from West Point without a single demerit?
Robert E. Lee. Considering that the whole system is designed to mete out demerits, it's surprising that anyone ever managed it, and shows the respect Lee got even at a young age.
I would pick Hannibal. For 2000 years generals have been trying to reprise Hannibal's tactical triumph at Cannae, mostly with limited sucess. I would like to do some research and see if it was just a fluke.
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quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Castro: The Cuban governemnt under Batista also outnumbered him and achieveing the ire of the USA I think also stackd things agsinst him.
Actually, the US stacked the deck in his favor in many ways, not the least of which was the weapons embargo it placed on Batista when he was fighting against Castro. ADDED: The US did not turn against Castro until well after he took power.
Also, Batista's army was inexperienced and ill-trained, and virtually never confronted Castro's troops in anything other than small numbers. Castro had a few hundred men who hid in the mountains and conducted guerrilla raids. Batista had no idea how to respond to this tactic, and when the town of Santa Clara was captured by Castro's forces, he panicked and left. (Keep in mind that Batista had been forced out of power one or two times before, with the aid of the US, and had returned. Like most Cubans, he did not believe Castro's victory would be permanent.)
Che Guevara in particular has a wildly overblown reputation as a military tactician. He almost single-handedly lost Castro the war, his attempts at fomenting revolution in Argentina and Mexico were abject failures, and in the end he walked into a trap set by his friend and comrade, Fidel Castro.
I don't have to read about this in history books, Blayne. This is my family history. My grandfather was the head of an anti-Batista political party, and a presidential candidate, and he served time in prison for trying to overthrow Fidel Castro.
I am, as always, disgusted by the murderers and thieves you choose to idolize.
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Takes cracking a few eggs to make an omlett. The loss of human lives is genraly overrated or exaggerated depending on ones point of view, also what happens had he succeeded in overtrowing Castro and someone else's grandfather was in prison or executed? How would you possibly predict how a counter revolution wouldve ended as? Plenty o leaders order people to be executed and somedays they don't but theives is hardly an accurate description of any of the Communist leaders I have named and as such displaying your ignorance on not only this topic but a general ignorance of the flow of history as a whole, history is clas struggle of revolutions and ocunter revlutions, Castro was originally a Cuban who simply wanted to overthrow Batista turning Marxist when i was apparent Eisenhower had no intention of being friendly to Cuban interests.
Ho Chi Minh even BlackBlade has respect for despite our quarrels, and frankly its pointless to discuss Mao in this forum.
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quote:The loss of human lives is genraly overrated or exaggerated depending on ones point of view
By "point of view," I think you mean "viewing angle." If you're looking UP the barrel, the loss of human life is a very important consideration.
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