Inappropriate Leaders

[Jason]

France: EVIL: Napoleon. Maybe not entirely evil, but sufficiently priggish and annoying to satisfy anyone. Annoying Corsican prig.
STUPID: Louis XVI. Or Marie Antoinette. Cake, anyone?
FUNNY: Louis XIV

Er... Louis XIV as "funny?" European hegemony, fighting off huge alliances against him, imitated by all, haha?

He's sort of one of the naturals for French leaders in the "great" department, rather than funny. He had his amusing foibles, but most monarchs (and leaders of other sorts) do...

Although there's the "Napoleon as antichrist" party, there's also the faction that sees him, with equal blindness, as some great democratic dictator-hero-liberator.

The obvious evil French choice is poor old Richelieu, thanks to Dumas I'd rather have him or better yet Mazarin as leader though... I'm thinking of modding Mazarin in and changing the colour to blue so I won't feel so odd playing the frogs.

[chiren]

Originally posted by Fresno
Bush is going to make America even mightier!

perfect !!!

[chiren]

Originally posted by Bad Ax
Hmm... some choices are obvious, others are explained...

Germany: EVIL: Hitler
STUPID: Mad King Ludwig isn't bad.
FUNNY: Ludwig

Ludwig never was a german leader !!!!
bavaria is not germany

but there were many stupid leaders...

i vote for King Barbarossa as german leader...

[chiren]

Originally posted by Jason

The obvious evil French choice is poor old Richelieu, thanks to Dumas I'd rather have him or better yet Mazarin as leader though... I'm thinking of modding Mazarin in and changing the colour to blue so I won't feel so odd playing the frogs.

no
i think pink fits perfect

but if you choose to take blue again for french i will face the french very seldom as im playing germans most games...

[Bad Ax]

Originally posted by ranskaldan


please explain.

In later life, Deng's only official office was president of the Chinese national bridge club.

[Bad Ax]

Originally posted by Jason

He's sort of one of the naturals for French leaders in the "great" department, rather than funny. He had his amusing foibles, but most monarchs (and leaders of other sorts) do...

I was thinking mostly along the lines of his diamond clothing and that sort of thing, yes...

[ranskaldan]

In later life, Deng's only official office was president of the Chinese national bridge club.

well... I know that seems to be funny and all that. But I hardly think that you can conclude that Deng was a funny leader. He was the one who rescued China from the horrendous abysms of Maoist communism, making him one of the most benefactive leaders in China's history. I'd prefer another leader for China's 'funny leader'...

If you're looking for other suggestions, well, lemme think...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by ranskaldan

well... I know that seems to be funny and all that. But I hardly think that you can conclude that Deng was a funny leader. He was the one who rescued China from the horrendous abysms of Maoist communism, making him one of the most benefactive leaders in China's history. I'd prefer another leader for China's 'funny leader'...

If you're looking for other suggestions, well, lemme think...

The Queen Mother/Regent at the time of the Boxer Rebellion springs to mind, although I suspect many Chinese would see her as a patriot, in the same way Indians might see Tipu/Tippoo Sultan as a patriot, or say, the Rani of Jaipur.

[War4ever]

pinochet, pol pot, many would have said arafat in the 80's

there are many....but innapropriate....you could say religion as a leader is innapropriate...... as many wars were fought over religion..

[ranskaldan]

The Queen Mother/Regent at the time of the Boxer Rebellion springs to mind, although I suspect many Chinese would see her as a patriot, in the same way Indians might see Tipu/Tippoo Sultan as a patriot, or say, the Rani of Jaipur.

No, rest assured, no Chinese sees her as a patriot. In fact, her name, Cixi (pronounced Tsuh-shee) is almost synonymous with 'old b*tch' in China. She basically handed out all of China's dignity, pride, treasury, and border territories on a silver platter to the western expansionists.

Anyway, she doesn't seem to be the 'funny' type. More the 'incompetent and unpopular' type.

[Badtz Maru]

Though he never successfully conquered all of Japan, Oda Nobunaga would make a pretty good evil Japanese leader.

I agree that Franklin Roosevelt would make a great evil U.S. President, he's responsible for the rise of socialism in the states. We now have a political party that only exists because it has made a portion of the population dependent on it's handouts.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Badtz Maru


I agree that Franklin Roosevelt would make a great evil U.S. President, he's responsible for the rise of socialism in the states. We now have a political party that only exists because it has made a portion of the population dependent on it's handouts.

What an absurd comparison. F.D.R. evil? What, like Hitler and Stalin evil? As for socialism in the States....well, that might be an idea.

[sophist]

Rajiv

Abe did nothing terrible? How about suspending the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War? How about all sorts of violations of civil liberties and what we today call human rights? Don't get me wrong; he saved the nation, but a saint he was not. As someone else pointed out, he was also a racist. Did he not say:

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause."

Originally posted by GePap
Really, how many of the leaders in this game did nothing terrible, questionable, or deadly? I am thinking Ghandi, Joan, and Abe- though some guy in a forum called Abe a tyrannt anyway.

Indians: Rajij (misspelled probably) Gandhi (Indira's Son), or perhaps any old, bad king.

[Jason]

No, that most certainly doesn't make Lincoln a rascist. His thoughts on races are pretty well known, as they are of obvious interest to historians.

Essentially he felt that Africans "might" be inferior because he didn't find them very aesthetically pleasing, but at the same time, he dropped fads like "colonization," and gradually became more and more pro-African. Frederick Douglass was impressed with Lincoln and likewise.

I've always been a little "eh" for FDR, fine fellow but nothing very special in and of himself. His dedication to the anti-nazi side of the second world war may have been decisive though, who knows. Only in wierd little David-Irving revisionist cult compounds is he some kind of sinister totalitarian mastermind trying to eat your babies.

The same as Lincoln is in parts of the not quite so reconstructed South.

Lincoln writing of the Know Nothings, an anti-catholic, anti-immigration party the Republicans absorbed out of political expedency:

Of their principles I think very little better than I do of the slavery extensionists. . . Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal.' We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes". When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "All men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism may be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy

From "Battle Cry of Freedom," an excellent text on the civil war by James McPherson. Bit pro-North and pro-Lincoln, but with good reason from what everything I've read.

He had moved steadily leftward [on the issue] during the war, from no emancipation to limited emancipation with colonization and then to universal emancipation with limited suffrage. This trajectory might well carry him to a broader platform of equal suffrage by the time the war ended. The entreaty in Lincolns second inaugural address for "malice toward none" and "charity for all" provided few clues on this question, though it seemed to endorse generous treatment of ex-rebels. At the same time this address left no doubt of Lincoln's intention to fight on until slavery was crushed forever.

Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn from the lash, shall be paid by another drawn from the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so it must be said 'the judgements of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.'

[sophist]

A fair point. I'm not convinced that he's not a racist, but I'm in enough doubt to stop affirming that he was a racist. Do remember, though, that even though abolitionists were against slavery, many were still in favor of racial discrimination. There's a wide gap between slavery and true equality, and in the 146 years since the end of the (American ) Civil War and the 148 (almost 149) years since the Emancipation Proclamation, we still have not covered all that ground. Being against slavery and colonization wasn't and isn't the same as being for total equality.

Originally posted by Jason
No, that most certainly doesn't make Lincoln a rascist. His thoughts on races are pretty well known, as they are of obvious interest to historians.

Essentially he felt that Africans "might" be inferior because he didn't find them very aesthetically pleasing, but at the same time, he dropped fads like "colonization," and gradually became more and more pro-African. Frederick Douglass was impressed with Lincoln and likewise.

[Jason]

By the end of it, he'd gone a long way. My feeling is that he would have pushed for full enfranchisement and handled things a LOT better than Johnson, although that kind of goes without saying.

An interesting marker is to watch Afro-American history writers doing the comments on Ken Burns' talking about Lincoln. You've got to be pretty non-racist for them to comment on how non-racist you were becoming.

I'd say Lincoln started out with a more benevolent view than average of the former slaves, and progressed from there, especially with everything that happened in the war, Black fighting units, contrabands, the Sea Islands, talking with Douglas...

Given the prevailing racism at the time, it's hard to say how a president could have been much more pro-African without damaging government support.