Comment: This list is a joke. Here there are plenty of deserving female athletes to include, and they are left off entirely; this is the category where whatever idiot who complied the list decided women don’t count? Babe Didrikson Zaharias? Wilma Rudolph? Babe Ruth belongs on the list, but a paragon of discipline and sportsmanship he wasn’t. Nobody who knows anything about baseball would pick Cy Young over better, more famously ethical pitchers like Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson. Jackie Robinson, sure, but no Willy Mays? Ted Williams was an all-time baseball great and a war hero. Ali was a draft dodger; Joe Louis helped discredit Hitler’s “master race” poison by knocking out Max Schmeling.
Scientists, Inventors, and Explorers (“Pioneers of the mind and frontier who pushed the boundaries of human knowledge and American territory.”)
1. Scientists: Luis Walter Alvarez, Norman Borlaug, George Washington Carver,
Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Maria Mitchell, Jonas Salk, Nikola Tesla
Comment: More DEI crap: George Washington Carver but not Luther Burbank?
2. Inventors: Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel Colt, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford,
Grace Hopper, Samuel Morse, Orville and Wilbur Wright.
Comment: There are other inventors in her own field that deserve honor as much as Grace Hopper, except that she has lady parts. Some gun-nut most have added Colt, and never heard of Philo Farnsworth, who first patented a television.
3. Explorers & Aviators: Neil Armstrong, William Clark, Christopher Columbus,
Amelia Earhart, John Glenn, Meriwether Lewis, Christa McAuliffe, Sally Ride,
Alan Shepard.
Comment: Ugh. Christa McAuliffe was no more of a hero than the three male astronauts who burned to death or her crewmates on the Challenger, nor does dying in an accident make one an automatic hero. Why should Sally Ride be honored more than any male astronaut? Glenn but not Alan Shepherd? Armstrong but not Buzz Aldrin? Why not the whole crew of Apollo 13? No Charles Lindburgh, the most famous aviator of them all? WHAT MORON COMPILED THIS LIST??
4. The “Human Computers” of NASA: Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan.
Comment: Pure DEI
5. Entrepreneurs and Industrialists (“Visionaries who utilized the system of free enterprise to build prosperity and create jobs.”): Andrew Carnegie, Walt Disney, Herbert Henry Dow, Steve Jobs, George P. Mitchell, Sam Walton.
Comment: Why Carnegie and not Rockefeller? Sears and Roebuck were ahead of Sam Walton and less destructive. Where are the Hollywood entrepreneurs who built the movie industry?
OK, this exercise is making me sick to my stomach and I have another third to go. I’m taking a break; in fact, I’ll leave the rest of the list to you to dissect except with for a random comment after my head explodes. It is as bad as what went before:
Artists and Architects: “Creators who captured the beauty of the American landscape and the dignity of its people.”
1.Visual Arts: Ansel Adams, John James Audubon, Charles Willson Peale, Norman Rockwell, John Singer Sargent, Gilbert Stuart.
2. Architects: Cass Gilbert, Pierre Charles L’Enfant, John Russell Pope, Henry
Hobson Richardson, Thomas Ustick Walter, Frank Lloyd Wright.
Musicians and Performers ( “The voices and talents that defined the American sound and culture.”)
1. Musicians: Louis Armstrong, Irving Berlin, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Nat King
Cole, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin, Woody Guthrie, Billie
Holiday, Whitney Houston, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Bessie Smith
Comment: KABOOM! Bing Crosby was more important, accomplished, more successful and more versatile than anyone on that list with the possible exceptions of Elvis and Sinatra. Irvin Berlin belongs, but no more than Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim.
2. Actors: Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Humphrey Bogart, Charlton Heston,
Bob Hope, Jimmy Stewart, Shirley Temple, John Wayne.
Comment: AAARGGHH! KABOOM! Charlie Chaplin! Judy Garland! Marlon Brando! Even Lauren Bacall would say that Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn were more accomplished and important in her field. Bob Hope was less an actor than Bing Crosby! There is no way to justify including James Stewart and not his friend, Henry Fonda, who constructed a legacy of representing the moral and ethical common American man. But the ultimate negligence is leaving off Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, both icons.
Finally, one word: “Directors.” Ford, Hawks, Welles, Stevens, Capra, and others. Yes, Rob Reiner. How can these crucial artists be omitted? Answer: when those compiling the list don’t know what the hell they are doing, that’s when.
1. Authors: Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), James Fenimore Cooper, Emily
Dickinson, Robert Frost, Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Ernest Hemingway,
Julia Ward Howe, Harper Lee, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville,
Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Comments: KABOOM! Psst! Morons! What about playwrights? Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, August Wilson, Neil Simon?
2. Scholars & Philosophers: Hannah Arendt, William F. Buckley, Jr., Peter
Drucker, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Milton Friedman, Russell Kirk, Henry David
Thoreau
3. Journalists: Edward Murrow, Alex Trebek.
Comment: KABOOM!!! ALEX TREBECK???
Faith Leaders and Humanitarians Servants of God and humanity who provided moral leadership to communities and aid
to the suffering.
1. Religious Figures: Katharine Drexel, Jonathan Edwards, George Fox, Billy
Graham, John Neumann, Junípero Serra, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Fulton Sheen,
Augustus Tolton.
2. Humanitarians: Clara Barton, Julia Child, Dorothy Day, Helen Keller, William
Mayo, Walter Reed, Anne Sullivan
Summation: The list is indefensible and indeed incompetentSignature significance: No mention of Clarence Darrow
In Part 3, I’ll recount the fate of a previous effort to achieve the same objective as a “National Garden of American Heroes.
Ethics Alarms 
I think we should save projects like this until our national debt is gone and our deficit becomes a surplus. Plus Trump is already straining his political capital with the ballroom, which is arguably more important.
That being said, if we WERE to do a project like this, I would assign a seperate committee of historians to each category, with each historian being selected for his or her expertise in that category. Sports category should be sports historians, science and tech category science historians, etc. The emphasis should be on innovators and trailblazers. A good litmus test for each candidate to be honored should be the question “Would this thing that they were famous for being a part of happen without them?”
Also, while you could say I’m biased, since I belong to the church he founded, I would add Joseph Smith to the list of religious figures. Yes, he’s controversial, but he began a faith which was born in America, then spread throughout the world, which celebrates America as having a divine destiny, and which was instrumental in settling the American west. (Incidentally, Philo Farnsworth was Mormon.)
The more I study “America” (especially the part of it known exclusively as US America) the more I begin to understand how utterly genius it all was/is and how utterly insane/destructive it is. And now, after a sick and convulsing nation elected a man with psychopathic tendencies, and has made what appears to have been a very consequential mistake (that will cause the Mid-Terms to be lost and the even-more-sick to gain influence and control again, it is this duality that fascinates me.
On one side, the Nation as political and social savior for The World (thinking of Tocqueville’s amazing appreciations of the dynamic developing country), but on the other the literal Whore of Babylon marketing and selling selling the most vile products of the American imagination. And here, the perfect emblem of Savior and Whore: Donaldo Trumpo. Supposing himself “Christian” and healer while annunciating an Armageddon-like annihilation of an entire people. Backed by Christian Zionist Jesús freaks who really are enthralled to a Satanic-like project but refuse to see it; the enterprise being driven by American Neo-cons and in collusion with the Tech Bros who are, factually, designing technologies with the power to totally enslave mankind (or unleash exactly the Prophetic Vision of the most evil anti-human force ever conceived of …
It is this duality that is so bizarrely interesting.
There is a very interesting conversation circulating that deals on — I am uncertain how to state it — the very earliest and most essential conceptual frameworks that the original builders of the New World were thinking about, dwelling on:
“How Kabbalah Shaped America: Land of the End”.
”Jesse Owens? Hello?”
Eh, come again? Jesse Owen’s was on the list.
not sure I understand your comment.
-Jut
3. Athletes and Competitors(Champions who demonstrated the American virtues of discipline, perseverance, and sportsmanship): Muhammad Ali, Herb Brooks, Kobe Bryant, Roberto Clemente, Lou Gehrig, Vince Lombardi, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe, Cy Young.
see?
-Jut
Well here’s what happened: the lists drove me crazy, and THAT list was so bad I started hallucinating. I missed Jesse, who obviously had to be on that list (as did Joe Louis>) Fixed.
But while I’m here, why Vince Lombardi and Herb Brooks as the only coaches? Red Auerbach? Knute Rockne?
“the Warren Court, liberal as it was, still hold the record for transformative rulings.”
Merely being “transformative” doesn’t make one a hero…certainly not if these were ‘progressive’ transformations
I don’t think there’s valid basis to criticize the Warren Court; surely its vital rulings like Miranda, Griswold, Bown v. Board of Education, Tinker, Brandenburg, and Brady were transformative in a good way, more than making up for that Court’s activist inclinations. And most historians agree that Warren, who was more politician than judge, was uniquely effective in managing the many egos on his Court.
Andrew Jackson Downing
Frederick Law Olmsted
“I get it, the only Medal of Honor recipients who count are the ones who have movies made about them.”
There are over 3,500 MoH winners in US History. They are certainly all heroes, but, as a way to cull the list down to representative examples – is there really a problem with “those who have had movies made about them”?
Movies, for all of Hollywood’s faults, have a tendency to zero in on archetypal characters that represent the larger mass of people – there can’t be too many more you have to add to capture the Medal of Honor Winners who are archetypal Americans.
(to be clear, we DO need a movie about Roy Benavidez)
But having a movie made about you is a post-event factor that should have no effect on public perception of merit.
The production of the movie reflects the greater visibility and impact on the culture that individual already had.
Alvin York, absolutely. Desmond Doss, definitely not.
My idea goes like this: First, a representative election council should be established composed of 1,000 people representing all of America. You’ll have some really smart people truly qualified to elect real heroes. But, you just have to have the totally unqualified who have the right to decide equally. One person, one vote. It’s the way things work.
Now, they create a list of all the heroes possible. Yes, Slater is there, so is Farrakhan, you get the idea: the demos decides, see? Vox populi etc etc.
And about 2,000 statues are made. Oh why not! 5,000! And they are set up on rollers and train tracks. They build the museum, the reflecting pools, the fast-food franchises, arcades of glitter, etc., and The People come. They let them in 100 at a time. But here’s the trick: AI will have analyzed their Life History from their birth. It will know, for certain, who their True Heroes are, and then they enter the Halls of the Heroes and their heroes are wheeled out on revolving tracks! (Kind of like an American version of Plato’s Cave).
OK maybe there will be some squabbles and even fist-fights. “I sure don’t recognize that hero!” But I assure you that when they come out they will declare that on the whole they have been honored and respected and their personal heroes had been presented to their satisfaction, as part of a Pantheon of Civil Religious figures of their own choices.
Early Military: Where is Daniel Morgan? Who better represented the American Revolution than Daniel Morgan? Crispus Attucks? I have read about the American Revolution in quite a few books and never seen his name (but most of those books are old). He is a footnote.
Science: Really? My list:
Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Michelson, Robert Andrews Millikan, Linus Pauling, Luther Burbank, Jonas Saulk, Edwin Hubble, Murray Gell-Mann, maybe John James Audubon, and maybe Francis Collins, although the reputations of the last 2 are in shambles (if I had to pick one, I would pick Audubon). Yes, some are on the list above, but this is my complete list.
Eli Whitney? Anyone??
Computer used to be a job title, just like dishwasher. When we made a machine to wash the dishes, the title moved to it. The same thing happened with computer.
Now, this is where the DEI people drive me mad. Doris C. Chandler ran a small group of American mathematicians and physicists that were competing with larger and much better funded (former Nazi) group to navigate Apollo to the moon and back. With a much later start, smaller group, and minimal funding, they produced a far superior solution that has been used to navigate to the moon and elsewhere in the solar system since. Why isn’t SHE honored?