Great White Leaders In History?

[TraceOneInfinite]

Name some of the traditional great white leaders in history. 

[Shallow]

Tommy Douglas;


As Premier of Saskatchewan he presided over the birth of public hospitalization and medicare. Through his five terms as Premier, Douglas pioneered reforms which made Saskatchewan society both progressive and prosperous.

More than 100 bills, 72 of them aimed at social or economic reform, were passed during the CCF's first year in power. By the end of two years, they had removed the sales tax from food and meals and managed to reduce the provincial debt by $20 million.

New departments were established which reflected the government's priorities. These included the new Deparment of Co-operatives, the Department of Labour and the Department of Social Welfare. To pay for the new departments, all the CCF cabinet ministers took a 28 per cent pay cut.

In 1944, pensioners were granted free medical, hospital and dental services, and the treatment of diseases such as cancer, tuberculosis, mental illness and venereal disease was made free for all.

In 1947, Douglas introduced universal hospitalization at a fee of $5 per year per person. "It is paid out of the treasury. Instead of the burden of those hospital bills falling on sick people, it is spread over all the people," Douglas said. In 1959, twelve years later, when the province's finances seemed to him to be strong enough, Douglas announced the coming of the medicare plan. It would be universal, pre-paid, publicly administered, provide high quality care, including preventive care, and be accepted by both providers and receivers of the medical service.

A Crown Corporation Act opened the way to such achievements as provincial air and bus lines. The Timber Board took control of lumbering, so the industry could prosper without destroying the forests. Later, fish and fur marketing boards were established.

However, no Crown corporation had as big an impact during the Douglas years than the Saskatchewan Power Corporation. Prior to the Douglas Administration, only 300 rural households had electrical power. By 1964, 65,000 farm households had been hooked up to the electrical grid built by SaskPower.

SaskTel provided affordable, quality and near universal phone access across the province.

The CCF introduced the Trade Union Act, which made collective bargaining mandatory and extended the rights of civil servants. The Act was described by Walter Reuther as "the most progressive piece of labour legislation on the continent." Other labour legislation set standards for workers' compensation, minimum wages, mandatory holidays and a labour relations board. Union membership rose 118 per cent in just four years.

Building on the 1944 campaign slogan of Humanity First, the first CCF budget devoted 70 per cent of its expenditures to health, welfare and education. School districts were enlarged to a more efficient size; teachers' salaries were raised; the University of Saskatchewan was expanded to include a medical college.

Industrial development and economic diversification were major goals of the Douglas government. The Administration helped private investors to develop potash mining, a steel mill and pipeline company, as well as encouraging development in oil and gas. When Douglas took power, 80 per cent of the province's GDP was generated by agriculture. By 1957, agriculture accounted for only 35 per cent of economic activity, even though a million more acres of farm land were under production.


http://www.saskndp.com/history/douglas.html

[M Dogg™]

 

[Twentytwofifty]

[Shallow]

Theodoros Kolokotronis  


He was the key to the Greek revolution. After 400 years of being enslaved by Muslims the Greeks felt it was time to fight back. There were only two ways to get out of slavery; 1) to convert to Islam or 2) to fight back and drive the Muslim oppressors out. The Greeks for the most part were to proud and Christian to convert so they fought back. (I guesss it's better to contradict your religion than to dismiss it completely)

Theodoros Kolokotronis lead the charge and Georgios Karaiskakis, Constantinos Kanaris, Makriyannis, Manto Mavrogenous, Laskarina Boumboulina, Andreas Miaoulis, Nikitaras, and Gregorios Dikaios followed. Greece acheived independance, but there were consequences. After losing Greece and failure to get it back, the Muslims got much crueler with the other territories they had conquered. Armenia got it the worst in 1915. The Ottoman Empire altogether killed millions of Armenians it was is known as the Armenian Genocide.

[Shallow]

Martin Luther





Martin Luther dealt the symbolic blow that began the Reformation when he nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church. That document contained an attack on papal abuses and the sale of indulgences by church officials.

But Luther himself saw the Reformation as something far more important than a revolt against ecclesiastical abuses. He believed it was a fight for the gospel. Luther even stated that he would have happily yielded every point of dispute to the Pope, if only the Pope had affirmed the gospel.

And at the heart of the gospel, in Luther's estimation, was the doctrine of justification by faith--the teaching that Christ's own righteousness is imputed to those who believe, and on that ground alone, they are accepted by God.

http://www.educ.msu.edu/homepages/laurence/reformation/Luther/Luther.htm

[Lincoln]

^^ Good call on Martin Luther & Tommy Douglas.

Pierre Elliot Trudeau 1919-2000


The Right Honorable Pierre Elliot Trudeau was the Prime Minister of Canada for most of the years between 1968 and 1984. He died on Thursday, September 28, 2000 from prostate cancer. He was born in Montreal, Quebec on October 18, 1919 and given the name Pierre Philippe Yves Elliot Trudeau.


The son of a French speaking father and English-speaking mother, he possessed that ideal Canadian talent known as perfect bilingualism. It was his love for Canada and his home province of Quebec that finally drove him into politics in the 1960’s. He was bilingual and believed that all Canadians should be, too. He was a Canadian nationalist and felt that politics would be the way that he could do battle with separatist elements and keep Quebec in Canada.


Mr. Trudeau quietly entered politics in the fall of the year 1965. A law professor at the University of Montreal, he had been a critic of the Liberal Party for fifteen years before deciding to join them and run for a seat in Parliament in the upcoming national elections. He won a seat in the riding of Town of Mount Royal on his first attempt.


He was soon given the portfolio of justice minister and made his mark on the nation with his famous “omnibus bill”. The new law decriminalized homosexual activity, other sexual activities previously deemed illegal and vulgar, and allowed for therapeutic abortions when the mother’s health was threatened. The bill also allowed for the Breathalyzer test to be used on suspected drunk drivers. This new outlook was a watershed in Canadian legal history. Mr. Trudeau’s famous quote to reporters was “There is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”


In 1968, then Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson retired and Mr. Trudeau decided to run for the leadership of the Liberal Party. Mr. Trudeau won a leadership race that was contested by a large slate of aspirants, a leadership convention where he won every ballot. A wealthy 48-year-old bachelor, he incited “Trudeaumania” wherever he appeared. He represented fresh new hope and ideas. His style was a marked contrast to the stodgy Canadian politics of the past. Later that same year he became Prime Minister of Canada in a general election.


Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s first years in office were exciting and star studded. His promise of a new “just society” was on everyone’s mind and lips. In 1969 he was photographed with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on their “Give Peace a Chance” tour. He was also known in Hollywood as the man who was dating Barbara Streisand in 1970.


Those heady days were interrupted when the FLQ (Front de liberation du Quebec) kidnapped a government minister and a British diplomat. The FLQ were a separatist-terrorist group with the aim of overthrowing the Canadian Government in Quebec. Mr. Trudeau reacted quickly by outlawing the FLQ and proclaiming the War Measures Act in order to apprehend suspected terrorists without warrant. One of the kidnap victims was murdered and the terrorists were exiled. Some went to Cuba.


In 1971 Pierre Trudeau married the twenty-two year old Margaret Sinclair. After three children (all boys) and a stormy relationship, the marriage ended in 1977. In 1979, after three consecutive election victories for the Liberals, they lost the election of that year to the progressive Conservatives under their new leader, Joe Clark. Mr. Trudeau resigned for a short time but returned to lead the Liberals to another victory in 1980.In that same year there was a referendum held on Quebec independence and Mr. Trudeau campaigned hard for the “no” side, which won easily.


His greatest achievements came during this last term as he repatriated the constitution, which had been in England, and entrenched the Charter of Rights and freedoms as part of the new constitution. In the negotiations between the ten provinces and the Federal Government, Quebec’s Parti Quebecois could not be satisfied so the constitution was signed by all of the provinces except Quebec. This has been a thorn in Quebec’s and Canada’s side here ever since.


Pierre Elliot Trudeau left politics in 1984. He retired to a quiet life working in a legal office and rarely made public appearances. He devoted most of his free time to his three sons, whom he doted on. He came out of retirement briefly in 1988 to voice his objections to the Meech Lake Accord. This accord was another effort to get Quebec’s signature on the constitution. He saw it as an agreement that weakened the federation and such was his influence in the country that the accord was defeated.


He could be seen daily walking the streets of Montreal on his way to and from work. Close friends say that he was never the same after his youngest son Michel died in an avalanche while skiing in British Columbia in 1998. The last year of his life he had been suffering from Parkinson’s and prostate cancer and had a stroke.


His two remaining sons, Justin and Sasha, along with his former wife Margaret, were at his bedside when he died. He would have turned 81 in October 2000. He was the first Canadian born Prime Minister in the 20th century.

[Lincoln]

John Brown

John Brown was a man of action -- a man who would not be deterred from his mission of abolishing slavery. On October 16, 1859, he led 21 men on a raid of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His plan to arm slaves with the weapons he and his men seized from the arsenal was thwarted, however, by local farmers, militiamen, and Marines led by Robert E. Lee. Within 36 hours of the attack, most of Brown's men had been killed or captured.

John Brown was born into a deeply religious family in Torrington, Connecticut, in 1800. Led by a father who was vehemently opposed to slavery, the family moved to northern Ohio when John was five, to a district that would become known for its antislavery views.

During his first fifty years, Brown moved about the country, settling in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, and taking along his ever-growing family. (He would father twenty children.) Working at various times as a farmer, wool merchant, tanner, and land speculator, he never was finacially successful -- he even filed for bankruptcy when in his forties. His lack of funds, however, did not keep him from supporting causes he believed in. He helped finance the publication of David Walker's Appeal and Henry Highland's "Call to Rebellion" speech. He gave land to fugitive slaves. He and his wife agreed to raise a black youth as one of their own. He also participated in the Underground Railroad and, in 1851, helped establish the League of Gileadites, an organization that worked to protect escaped slaves from slave catchers.

In 1847 Frederick Douglass met Brown for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts. Of the meeting Douglass stated that, "though a white gentleman, [Brown] is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery." It was at this meeting that Brown first outlined his plan to Douglass to lead a war to free slaves.

Brown moved to the black community of North Elba, New York, in 1849. The community had been established thanks to the philanthropy of Gerrit Smith, who donated tracts of at least 50 acres to black families willing to clear and farm the land. Brown, knowing that many of the families were finding life in this isolated area difficult, offered to establish his own farm there as well, in order to lead the blacks by his example and to act as a "kind father to them."

Despite his contributions to the antislavery cause, Brown did not emerge as a figure of major significance until 1855 after he followed five of his sons to the Kansas territory. There, he became the leader of antislavery guerillas and fought a proslavery attack against the antislavery town of Lawrence. The following year, in retribution for another attack, Brown went to a proslavery town and brutally killed five of its settlers. Brown and his sons would continue to fight in the territory and in Missouri for the rest of the year.

Brown returned to the east and began to think more seriously about his plan for a war in Virginia against slavery. He sought money to fund an "army" he would lead. On October 16, 1859, he set his plan to action when he and 21 other men -- 5 blacks and 16 whites -- raided the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry.

Brown was wounded and quickly captured, and moved to Charlestown, Virginia, where he was tried and convicted of treason, Before hearing his sentence, Brown was allowed make an address to the court.



. . . I believe to have interfered as I have done, . . . in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it be deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done."



Although initially shocked by Brown's exploits, many Northerners began to speak favorably of the militant abolitionist. "He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. . . .," said Henry David Thoreau in an address to the citizens of Concord, Massachusetts. "No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature. . . ."

John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859.

[Shallow]

^^ Good call on Martin Luther & Tommy Douglas.

What about Kolokotronis?



Any way;


Mary Harris Jones


Mary Harris Jones was over fifty years old before she began her career as a labor organizer. She was born in Ireland, but her family was forced to emigrate because they rebelled against British rule. While living in the northeast, she completed school, became a teacher, and married an iron moulder. From her husband, George E. Jones, she learned how workers were struggling against abuses by unscrupulous employers. Two tragic events changed her from a bystander to a fighter for the rights of labor. In 1867 Mary Jones lost her husband and four children in a yellow fever epidemic. And as she was rebuilding her life in Chicago four years later, her successful dressmaking business was destroyed in the famous Chicago fire.

Destitute and alone, Mary Jones strongly identified with working people who had no protection against low wages, long hours, and dangerous working conditions. Owners often used blacklists and violence to intimidate workers and prevent unionism. "Mother" Jones, as she came to be called, was neither frightened nor discouraged. She fearlessly began to organize both men and women to fight for their rights.

A fiery and electrifying speaker, "Mother" Jones specialized in creating a public outcry over the inhuman treatment of workers. She once put together a caravan of children on a march to dramatize the evils of child labor. Her most famous efforts were attempts to organize the miners of West Virginia and Colorado. Scorning jail, deportation to other states, and threats on her life, "Mother" Jones became an enemy of the wealthy business owners. Well into her eighties, she continued to agitate and actively assist in the struggle to unionize streetcar, garment, and steel workers. Unique as a woman in the predominately male labor movement, "Mother" Mary Harris Jones became a symbol of labor's insistence on its right to decent treatment and wages.


http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=89

[TraceOneInfinite]

^^ Good call on Martin Luther

So far I agree with Lincoln on John Brown being a great leader, some of the other names I wasn't familiar with.

As for Martin Luther, before you guys select Martin Luther as being a great white man, I just want to make sure your comfortable with these statements he made about Jews...

*****************

Martin Luther on Jews....

"What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews?  Since they live among us and we know about their lying and blasphemy and cursing, we can not tolerate them if we do not wish to share in their lies, curses, and blasphemy...Let me give you my honest advice.
"First, their synagogues should be set on fire...[/i]
"Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed...
"Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer-books and Talmuds in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught.
"Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat of death to teach any more...
"Fifthly, passport and traveling priveleges should be absolutely forbidden to the Jews..."--- On the Jews and Their Lies 1543 Information obtained from yashanet.com and The roots of Christian anti-semitism by Malcolm Hay, the online encyclopedia wikipedia.com; www.humanitas-international.org; www.rmember.org


*********


Shallow and Lincoln, in light of these remarks, do you still consider Martin Luther as a white hero?

[Lincoln]

^^ Good call on Martin Luther & Tommy Douglas.

What about Kolokotronis?

Well I pointed out those 2 because I was familiar with them, but I did enjoy reading what you put up about him.

[Lincoln]

To respond to Infinite's comments, I was surprised to read what he put up about Martin Luther's anti-semitic comments. I have long been an admirer of Martin Luther's and have studied much about him and never came across anything like that. I'll have to research it a bit more.

[Lincoln]

At the beginning of his career, Luther was apparently sympathetic to Jewish resistance to the Catholic Church. He wrote, early in his career:

The Jews are blood-relations of our Lord; if it were proper to boast of flesh and blood, the Jews belong more to Christ than we. I beg, therefore, my dear Papist, if you become tired of abusing me as a heretic, that you begin to revile me as a Jew.

But Luther expected them to convert to his purified Christianity. When they did not, he turned violently against Jews.

It is impossible for modern people to read the horrible passages below and not to think of the burning of synagogues in November 1938 on Kristallnacht. Nor would one wish to excuse Luther for this text.

A number of points must, however, be made. The most important concerns the language used. Luther used violent and vulgar language throughout his career....We do not expect religious figures to use this sort of language in the modern world, but it was not uncommon in the early 16th century. Second, although Luther's comments seem to be proto-Nazi, they are better seen as part of tradition of Medieval Christian anti-Semitism. While there is little doubt that Christian anti-Semitism laid the social and cultural basis for modern anti-Semitism, modern anti-Semitism does differ in being based on pseudo-scientific notions of race. The Nazis imprisoned and killed Jews who had converted to Christianity: Luther would have welcomed them.

None of this justifies what follows, but it may help to comprehend what is happening. In 1994, the Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America rejected Luther's anti-Semitic writings.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Luther_on_Jews.html

That kind of thing was commonplace in those days, but I've always been a person who thinks the good things a person does can outweigh the bad things.

[Shallow]

Infinite; Is a man who speaks good but contradicts his good words with evil acts a good man?


For example, If I say I'm going to devise a plan to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless but do not act on it, should I be considered great?

[Shallow]

Socrates; Lead the movement of modern thought in a way that no one in the Western world had done before him. His influences are too great for him to be ignored.

In his use of critical reasoning, by his unwavering commitment to truth, and through the vivid example of his own life, fifth-century Athenian Socrates set the standard for all subsequent Western philosophy. Since he left no literary legacy of his own, we are dependent upon contemporary writers like Aristophanes and Xenophon for our information about his life and work. As a pupil of Archelaus during his youth, Socrates showed a great deal of interest in the scientific theories of Anaxagoras, but he later abandoned inquiries into the physical world for a dedicated investigation of the development of moral character. Having served with some distinction as a soldier at Delium and Amphipolis during the Peloponnesian War, Socrates dabbled in the political turmoil that consumed Athens after the War, then retired from active life to work as a stonemason and to raise his children with his wife, Xanthippe. After inheriting a modest fortune from his father, the sculptor Sophroniscus, Socrates used his marginal financial independence as an opportunity to give full-time attention to inventing the practice of philosophical dialogue.

For the rest of his life, Socrates devoted himself to free-wheeling discussion with the aristocratic young citizens of Athens, insistently questioning their unwarranted confidence in the truth of popular opinions, even though he often offered them no clear alternative teaching. Unlike the professional Sophists of the time, Socrates pointedly declined to accept payment for his work with students, but despite (or, perhaps, because) of this lofty disdain for material success, many of them were fanatically loyal to him. Their parents, however, were often displeased with his influence on their offspring, and his earlier association with opponents of the democratic regime had already made him a controversial political figure. Although the amnesty of 405 forestalled direct prosecution for his political activities, an Athenian jury found other charges—corrupting the youth and interfering with the religion of the city—upon which to convict Socrates, and they sentenced him to death in 399 B.C.E. Accepting this outcome with remarkable grace, Socrates drank hemlock and died in the company of his friends and disciples.

Our best sources of information about Socrates's philosophical views are the early dialogues of his student Plato, who attempted there to provide a faithful picture of the methods and teachings of the master. (Although Socrates also appears as a character in the later dialogues of Plato, these writings more often express philosophical positions Plato himself developed long after Socrates's death.) In the Socratic dialogues, his extended conversations with students, statesmen, and friends invariably aim at understanding and achieving virtue {Gk. areth [aretê]} through the careful application of a dialectical method that employs critical inquiry to undermine the plausibility of widely-held doctrines. Destroying the illusion that we already comprehend the world perfectly and honestly accepting the fact of our own ignorance, Socrates believed, are vital steps toward our acquisition of genuine knowledge, by discovering universal definitions of the key concepts governing human life.

Interacting with an arrogantly confident young man in Euqufrwn (Euthyphro), for example, Socrates systematically refutes the superficial notion of piety (moral rectitude) as doing whatever is pleasing to the gods. Efforts to define morality by reference to any external authority, he argued, inevitably founder in a significant logical dilemma about the origin of the good. Plato's Apologhma (Apology) is an account of Socrates's (unsuccessful) speech in his own defense before the Athenian jury; it includes a detailed description of the motives and goals of philosophical activity as he practiced it, together with a passionate declaration of its value for life. The Kritwn (Crito) reports that during Socrates's imprisonment he responded to friendly efforts to secure his escape by seriously debating whether or not it would be right for him to do so. He concludes to the contrary that an individual citizen—even when the victim of unjust treatment—can never be justified in refusing to obey the laws of the state.

The Socrates of the Menwn (Meno) tries to determine whether or not virtue can be taught, and this naturally leads to a careful investigation of the nature of virtue itself. Although his direct answer is that virtue is unteachable, Socrates does propose the doctrine of recollection to explain why we nevertheless are in possession of significant knowledge about such matters. Most remarkably, Socrates argues here that knowledge and virtue are so closely related that no human agent ever knowingly does evil: we all invariably do what we believe to be best. Improper conduct, then, can only be a product of our ignorance rather than a symptom of weakness of the will {Gk. akrasia [akrásia]}. The same view is also defended in the PrwtagoraV (Protagoras), along with the belief that all of the virtues must be cultivated together.


http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/socr.htm