Favorite World Leader

borgslayer · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:08 am**

I consider Ghengis Khan as a world leader certainly a powerful one I might add.

Republican_Man · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:12 am**

How was Napoleon a great world leader? He was a conquerer, little else. And he lost, like Hitler would after him, trying to conquer Russia, lol

Curious. How could such a man be one of your favorites?
Conquerers tend to not be favorites in my book...

Cathexis · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:14 am**

Republican_Man · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:17 am**

So, then, could you explain how he could be one of your favorites, then? Maybe I happened to learn something about him in the past that I don't recall, and you can refresh my memory. If not, then I'll learn something new.
All I can recall is that he was this short little military general dude who became the leader of the French Empire, expanded it greatly, and failed to take control of Russia, because he was dumb enough to go there in the first place.

Valathous · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:25 am**

After France having to endure a failing monarchy, followed by several governments who enjoyed beheading people for fun once the King was killed, Napoleon stepped in. With his Napoleonic Code he gave civil rights to all the inhabitants and they were all much happier. He lost, was put in jail on an island. He escaped the island and made it back to France where the people immediately made him their leader again because they loved him so much. He didn't have time to rebuild his army before a bunch of nations hastily moved in on him. He was a military genius, too. He was just a bit too eager and didn't wait until spring to attack Russia.

Cathexis · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:26 am**

Republican_Man · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:30 am**

Interesting. Yes, I did know about his exile and eventual return, but forgot about it. I do recall learning that he instituted the Napoleonic Code, but I don't recall too much depth into it. I also recall learning about his military genius as well--which I will grant you. And I will grant you that he is a prominent historical figure.
Intriguing, however. I suppose such things qualify him as a good world leader, but he's still not one of my favorites.

Cathexis · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:34 am**

borgslayer · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:43 am**

Catherine the Great?
Joseph Stalin?
Lenin?
King Louis XII?
Queen Elizabeth?

Valathous · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:47 am**

Lenin rocked. Communism could have worked under him. Stalin destroyed it.

King Louis (Capet) XIV was awesome. The Sun King. "I am the state."
He built the Palace of Versailles

Republican_Man · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:47 am**

Would you actually consider Stalin or Lenin one of your favorite world leaders?

But of course Louis rocked. George Lucas took his classic line and had Palpatine say, "I am the Senate."

Valathous · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 12:48 am**

Cathexis · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 1:04 am**

Republican_Man · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 1:17 am**

You know what? For the sake of this discussion, and considering the demand for older figures, I will allow the last milenium in entirety--since the year 1006, that is--so long as a more recent historical figure (since 1770s) is suggested by you.

Alright? Everybody happy?

Valathous · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 1:20 am**

King Arthur and Richard the Lionheart!

(Had to be said...)

borgslayer · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 1:28 am**

In that case the Pharoah Tutankhamun was a great leader. Only a great leader who allow the building of a pyramid.

TrekkieMage · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:13 pm**

Bismark. You mentioned Nepoleon and I remembered an article from AP Modern Euro...Nepoleon v. Bismark.

Not the conquest driven Nepoleon that everone remembers, the wussy guy who got totally creamed by everyone. Yeah. Anyways.

Bismark was brilliant, he turned Germany from a confederation into a country and became a dominant world leader. Then when he left/died (don't remember which) Germany basically fell apart

Valathous · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:28 pm**

*It's Napoleon, not Nepoleon

Bismark got fired (resigned on Wilhelm II's insistence). So the Emporer pretty much told him to pack up.

AUDACIOUS · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:31 pm I can't agree..**

O.k..
I know a lil about Nepoleon too..
And lets be fair?
Neppy was RUTHLESS..
He killed in scores for what?
Power, dude!! I mean come on.. he wasn't on some crusade to make the world a better place.. he was kickin butts and taking names to RULE!
I mean just because he was clever that makes him a good man?

What your saying could be said for Hitler too!!
Hitler was the cause of ALLOT of supperior technology!
Hitler was a ruthless and cunning tactician! but can we say that because he lost doesn't make him any less of a great figure in history also?
The murderer. No genicide of hundreds of thousands of people?

and did somone say Stalin?
Not the guy who killed his own soldiers?
Not the man who had his entire staff murdered and marked as traitors right?
If we are talking about the same guy then I fear its pretty much my Hitler arguement all over again..

Hey.. I guess it probely comes down to opinion but in my humble opinion dictators make poor role models..

Valathous · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:36 pm**

For the second time....

*NAPOLEON. There is an A in his name.

2nd of all, he killed armies. He walked in and if an army was in his way he destroyed it. He did not slaughter all the peasants. The Napoleonic Code led the way for what we all now love called RIGHTS. But hey, if you don't like your rights then go ahead and hate him.

BTW, Hitler's genocide was in the millions, not hundreds of thousands. He was an evil man but very effective and very charismatic.

AUDACIOUS · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:43 pm**

Whoops!
Sorry.. didn't know we had a human spell checker.. **Giggles**

But here's my response..

Why do so many intellectuals excuse thuggery and whitewash the crimes of megalomaniacs? The myth of Napoleon, like that of Alexander the Great, is also deeply enshrined in our collective romance�to question either risks real outrage.

Both dictators were eerily similar in ways that go beyond being military geniuses who ruled entire continents by their early 30s. In each case ghastly records of slaughter were carefully masked by a professed concern for the arts and sciences. Like Hitler's Speer and de Gaulle's Malraux, Denon was one of a long line of gifted toadies dating back to Alexander's Callisthenes, court intellectuals who simultaneously worshiped and loathed the powers that be, who at least noticed them.

Napoleon and Alexander were money-driven thieves par excellence, perhaps the difference being only that the looted imperial treasuries at Susa, Babylon, and Persepolis yielded more specie than the Swiss banks at Berne. The Great's "Brotherhood of Man" was about as genuinely utopian as the Code Napol�on. Both strongmen dazzled their immediate circle with lapidary self-infatuation�for example, Lets bring up one of Napoleon's Quotes. "At twenty-nine years of age I have exhausted everything. It only remains for me to become a complete egoist."

AUDACIOUS · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 5:49 pm**

Whoops..
Forgot to address this..

Valathous · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 6:12 pm**

In no way will I ever say Hitler was a good man, he did what he set out to do. Brought Germany out of a depression to have one of the best economies, revived the "German War Machine" and was in fact very charismatic. No, he's not a man that should be role modelled based on his beliefs and ideologies, or his senseless genocide.

Napoleon never committed genocide. as far as I'm aware. He just conquered lands from armies and was a genius. Yes, he spent a lot of money but he also had a lot of France's historic monuments built that people still enjoy to this day. L'Arc du Triomphe is beautiful.... I *think* (wouldn't swear to it) that he had The Louvre built.

AUDACIOUS · **Thu Jan 19, 2006 6:17 pm**

Ok so your argument is since he killed mostly soldiers he's ok?
In the end, his real legacie was millions dead and empires that crumbled the second he was gone. I suppose the only real difference between him and Alex, was that Alexander loved horses and named a city after his steed Bucephalas, whereas Napoleon rode to death dozens of mounts and exhausted Europe of its horseflesh.

Paul Johnson's polemical Napoleon, an entry in the Viking/Penguin series of brief biographies, is not impressed with the little corporal or anything he did. After all, the military record is unquestioned�17 years of wars, perhaps six million Europeans dead, France bankrupt, her overseas colonies lost. And it was all such a great waste, for, as Johnson shows, when the self-proclaimed t�te d'arm�e was done, France's "losses were permanent" and she "began to slip from her position as the leading power in Europe to second-class status�that was Bonaparte's true legacy."

Lest we think Napoleon perverted the French Revolution's idealism, we should remember that he in some sense embodied the very brutality of that entirely unnecessary event. As Johnson notes, "The example of Britain and the Scandinavian countries showed that all the desirable reforms that the French radicals brought about by force and blood could have been achieved by peaceful means." Still, Napoleon is inexplicable apart from the Great Terror, which elevated him from a minor artillery officer to First Citizen who could handle the mob "with a whiff of grape shot," and yet when needed could mouth the appropriate slogans of fraternity.