The Loud Libertarian View ~ My Personal Mount Rushmore!

Man, it would be sooooo great, if I could reprogram the rock on the face of Mount Rushmore to show my version of it! Wouldn't it be awesome, if all'f us could create that, perhaps in miniature, for our personal admiration? Statuesque miniatures of Mount Rushmore, to our own personal liking?

And we could update them, over the years, as new Great Americans emerged!

I'm not hating on the original, mind you: I believe that they got it half right.

Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln were Great Presidents, and great men.

But George Washington and Thomas Jefferson? Great Revolutionaries, sure, and when you're talking about the American Revolution, which is the greatest Revolution of them all, then that's worth commemorating, in many ways. But are they among the four greatest Americans of all time?

Are they even among the four greatest Revolutionaries?

No.

Washington was a great American, and a great Leader...But he was a vastly overrated General, and an awful President, one who let those same British push us around, and blew a perfectly fortuitous opportunity to defend our Citizens, make War on Britain...and seize Canada!

And Jefferson was a phenomenal Revolutionary, but a horrific nightmare of a President, allowing our Citizens to be flat out degraded by the British, those same British, yet again, and, once again, like Washington, blowing the chance to channel our rage into raising and equipping, with our rapidly growing resources, a strong Army and Navy, with which we could've easily swept up Canada.

Thenceforth, we could've turned our Army south against Spain, which was also violating our ships and the freedom of our Sailors on the high seas, and rapidly conquered Mexico and a huge swath of the Caribbean basin, something that my man Alexander Hamilton had staunchly advocated.

They were awful Presidents, during a time when we should've harnessed the burgeoning strength of this young nation, in defense of the Citizens whose rights were being persistently violated on the high seas, by Britain, Spain, and France, to make War against those nations, who were busy fighting each other, and built an Empire of Freedom, stretching from the Arctic Circle to the Andes.

Top 20? Absolutely. Top 4? Nah...

I'd actually like to see at least a couple of different Mount Rushmores.

Top Revolutionaries.

Top Presidents.

Top Americans.

I'll start with Top Revolutionaries, today...

Sam Adams ~ The Original Son of Liberty!

Plain and simple: We owe it all to Sam Adams, The First Patriot.

Sam Adams was an extraordinary Rabble Rouser.

Sam Adams had a tremendous capacity for focusing people on the essentials.

Sam Adams had a tremendous capacity to inspire.

He got it all started.

Without him, there is no Boston Tea Party, no challenging a tyrannical British Parliament, no War for Independence. It was him that the British were coming for, when the British were coming.

Without him, there is no America.

Patrick Henry ~ Virginia's Very Soul!

The American Revolution was unquestionably led by my fellow Yankees: Massachusetts and its New EngLand partners, who stood up to our tyrannical British Parliament, and whose defiant courage triggered a murderous British onslaught at Lexington, inflaming all New EngLand to war!

But the American Revolution, for it to have its best chance of succeeding against the most powerful nation on Earth, needed to be a partnership between all 13 colonies, and, above all, between Massachusetts and Virginia, the two original colonies, and by far its most powerful.

Virginia had its fair share of revolutionary heroes, including Washington and Jefferson, of course, but none so crucial as Patrick Henry, who, in the early days, when quiet Virginia might just as easily have stayed out of the fray and prayed for the best, inspired his fellow Virginians, in the most searingly passionate and inspiring ways, with the reality that Boston's fight was every American's fight!

Nathanael Greene ~ The General Who Won The American Revolutionary War!

It's truly astonishing, how many people believe that Washington won that War. He did no such thing.

Washington performed many exemplary feats...and made several horrible mistakes.

But he survived. And he was a great Leader, a steadying force.

But in the end, Rochambeau practically had to drag Washington down to Yorktown, to deliver the coup de grace, a coup de grace that was entirely the work of others.

And the most prominent of those others? General Nathanael Greene.

It was Greene who took over the Southern Front, after Generals Franklin and Gates had gotten their commands wiped out, their Soldiers scattered, and all of Dixie left to the British.

It was Greene who made something out of nothing.

It was Greene who took a ragtag bunch of Soldiers and Militia, harried Cornwallis into madness, and drew him further and further north, wearing him down, and wearing him out.

It was Greene, and it was Daniel Morgan, and it was their men, who ultimately drove Cornwallis, out of supplies, out of patience, and out of strength, to seek solace in Yorktown...a haven turned trap.

It was Greene, more than any one man, who won that War.

Daniel Morgan ~ Revolutionary Warrior!

Cowpens is an obscure name for one of the most dramatic, pivotal, and magnificently brilliant Battles ever fought. In the immediate aftermath of the disasters that preceded the arrival of Generals Green and Morgan in Dixie, the American Revolution teetered on the brink of defeat and despair. Back in 1780, with Washington struggling to keep an Army in the field, way up north in Valley Forge, and weariness and frustration gripping the land, in the wake of our catastrophic defeats at Charleston
and Camden, the Revolution was on the brink of destruction...until The Battle of Cowpens.

Hannibal Barca, himself, would be proud. Morgan may've saved The Revolution, that day.