The latest meme sweeping the blogosphere is the 10 Worst American list, courtesy of All Things Beautiful. I find this an intriguing exercise, and hope my contribution to the discussion provides some enlightenment. I've intentionally excluded living individuals, and military and political leaders from the Civil War. Also excluded was Benedict Arnold, the inclusion of whom is simply too trite.

1) Margaret Sanger -- A eugenist who admired Hitler's racial cleansing laws, she started out to make sure blacks, Jews, Slavs, and other "inferior races" didn't outbreed the superior WASP and Germanic stock that she felt merited a privileged place in American society. her legacy continues in the form of the genocidal organization she started, Planned Parenthood.

2) Aaron Burr -- Certainly a murderer, arguably a traitor, Burr was the prototype for the power-hungry politician out for his own interests above those of the US. Had he managed to beat Jefferson in 1800, it might have been the end of the American constitutional system.

3) Julius & Ethel Rosenberg -- One could argue that the Soviets would have gotten the A-bomb in a few years without these spies, but together with Alger Hiss they made the anti-Communist hysteria of the late 1940s and 1950s seem perfectly reasonable. While their supporters claim that they were framed, the Verona documents make it clear that they were guilty as homemade sin.

4) Alger Hiss -- Betrayed his country to the Soviets for years as he climbed his way through the State Department.

5) Hugo Black -- The only Klansman to serve on the Supreme Court, he is the person responsible for incorporating Jefferson's "wall of separation" analogy into legal dogma. He built his career on the anti-black, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic platform of the KKK, and never really renounced the religious bigotry that went with that affiliation.

6) Thaddeus Stevens -- This Radical Republican was among the most malignant of his breed in Washington during and after the War Between The States. He was instrumental in implementing harsh Reconstruction policies that ultimately harmed the freed slaves he sought to help, and he was key to the efforts to hamstring Andrew Johnson, leading eventually to the impeachment of Johnson on charges of violating a law that did not apply to his actions.

7) Alfred Kinsey -- Pervert extrordinaire who paid pedophiles to molest kids as a part of his research. His work provided the scholarly justification for the Sexual Revolution, one of the more harmful social developments of the 1960s.

8) Richard J. Daley -- His corrupt power in Chicago was such that he could provide graft galore and steal a presidential election with impunity. Not even Boss Tweed could manage the latter.

9) Elbridge Gerry -- Ever wonder why they call it gerrymandering? This is the guy who created the practice of drawing political district lines for partisan advantage.

10) J. Edgar Hoover -- For all the good he did, his rogue operation of the FBI gave that agency inordinate power with little supervision. He is the very exemplar of what we should fear in the way of government run amok.

DISHONORABLE MENTIONS: Elijah Muhammad, John F. Kennedy, Joseph Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Roger Taney, Andrew Jackson, Tim McVeigh, Gus Hall, Al Capone.

Living figures who will be eligible for inclusion five years after their deaths: Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, George Soros, Ibrahim Hooper, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakahn, John Walker, Jr. Johathan Pollard, Bill Clinton, Teddy Kennedy, Ward Churchill, Jane Fonda, John Kerry, Maxine Watters, Cynthia McKinney.