John Hawkins sponsored a fun little contest in which he asked about fifty bloggers to submit the “twenty greatest Americans.” The results are posted here.

I chose to submit four each in five differenct categories. For variety, I guess.

My suggestions were:

Presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Quincy Adams (chosen for both what he did as president, and after he was president).

Activists: Lysander Spooner, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Paine.

Intellectuals: Benjamin Franklin, Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick, Milton Friedman.

Writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken, William Faulkner.

Entertainers: Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Humphrey Bogart, Jack Nicholson.

I struggled to find two more entertainers after Davis and Dylan. I sort of thought I had to pick two from film. Two more musicians would have been easy. So I chose my two favorite actors.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2003 at 8:38 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.