Yet Another Glorious Twenty

John H. over at Right Wing News has issued another challenge to bloggers such as myself (and, I suppose, to the good ones as well). The Discovery Channel is running a show with a flawed premise: namely, they are going to order the hundred "greatest" Americans. So, yes, out of the billions of citizens that America has had over the past 229 or so years, the Discovery Channel of all people thinks they can come up with an ordered list of the best of the best of the best.

Of course, so do I.

I won't make nearly as pompous a claim as the Discovery Channel people, but I will give this activity my best shot. My method is to use quotas, as part of a legislatively judicially mandated affirmative action discrimination program. I will select four people from each of the following five categories: politics and government; science; military and safety; music, art, and popular culture; and other entrepreneurs.

Alexander Hamilton
James Madison
James K. Polk
George Washington

Albert Einstein
Enrico Fermi
Richard Feynman
J. Robert Oppenheimer

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Ulysses S. Grant
Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller
George Dewey

Aaron Copland
Glenn Miller
Paul Morphy
Wilhelm (William) Steinitz

Nolan Bushnell
Thomas Edison
Henry Ford
Steve Jobs

There you have it. I make no claim about this list being complete or anything like that; in fact, should I sit down to do this again, even in an hour or so, it would likely look vastly different. But still, it is difficult to argue that these twenty individuals did not have a great and positive impact on America.