CP Historical Figures Draft (Round 14) (pick anytime)

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by Aeneas

See it now, could not see it earlier.

Ok cool. The permissions are weird, I've opened viewing to everyone but sometimes doesn't work.

[Displaced Flames fan]

In the WOMEN category, team Historyectomy is very proud to select, and introduce you to (except for Montana Moe) the Daughter of Montana, Jeannette Rankin.

Rankin was born in Missoula, MT in 1880. She did many awesome things in her life.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about her is that she was the first woman elected to Congress in the US. This happened in 1916 and happened before women had the right to vote. Wow.

Her first vote in Congress was to vote against joining WWI. She served only one term and did not see reelection. She was elected to Congress, however, again in 1941 and promptly voted against joining WWII. She was the lone vote against.

The famous newspaperman William Allen White wrote this about that vote .....
"Rudyard Kipling coined the phrase: 'The female of the species is more deadly that the male.' Well – look at Jeannette Rankin. Probably a hundred men in Congress would have liked to do what she did. Not one of them had the courage to do it. The Gazette entirely disagrees with the wisdom of her position. But, Lord, it was a brave thing! And its bravery some way discounted its folly.
"When, a hundred years from now, courage, sheer courage based upon moral indignation, is celebrated in this country, the name of Jeannette Rankin, who stood firm in folly for her faith, will be written in monumental bronze – not for what she did but for the way she did it."

Rankin was a leading voice in the suffrage movement, for obvious reasons. She did other little things like....

• Founding vice-President of the ACLU
• Founding member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
• At the age of 88 she led a march of 5000 women on Washington protesting the Vietnam war. They named themseleves the Jeannette Rankin brigade and boasted Coretta Scott King among their ranks.
• Upon her death created the Jeannette Rankin Foundation which has grown from 1 $500 scholarship to 80 $2000 scholarships per year for low income women.

[Flash Walken]

In the catagory of Writer team Charlie Don't Surf is proud to select, Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky.

"Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss."
- Albert Einstein

"...the only psychologist from whom I have anything to learn."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Dostoyevsky's literary output explores human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society. Considered by many as a founder or precursor of 20th-century existentialism, his Notes from Underground (1864), written in the embittered voice of the anonymous "underground man", was called by Walter Kaufmann the "best overture for existentialism ever written."[5] Dostoyevsky is recognized internationally as one of the greatest and most influential writers of all time.[6][7]

edit: and I should also specify, probably my favourite writer.

[Yeah_Baby]

I'm compiling info for possible picks. I'm really torn. I don't want to be obvious two picks in a row.

[Itse]

HeroQuest traded fourth round pick to Flash for Genghis Khan, in the Military Leader category.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by Itse

HeroQuest traded fourth round pick to Flash for Genghis Khan, in the Military Leader category.

Cool.

Flash: the pick you traded for is AK'd.... so pick again anytime.

[Yeah_Baby]

With our fourth round pick team Silent enim leges inter arma selects in the Thinker category, the father of realism Thucydides.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Thucydides (c. 460 B.C. – c. 395 B.C.) (Greek Θουκυδίδης, Thoukydídēs) was a Greek historian and author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century B.C. war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 B.C. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" due to his strict standards of evidence-gathering and analysis in terms of cause and effect without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work.[1]
He has also been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the relations between nations as based on might rather than right.[2] His classical text is still studied at advanced military colleges worldwide, and the Melian dialogue remains a seminal work of international relations theory.
More generally, Thucydides showed an interest in developing an understanding of human nature to explain behaviour in such crises as plague, genocide (as practised against the Melians), and civil war.

As a politics minor who loved taking courses in IR I found that I made a lot of similar assumptions about human nature as Thucydides and realized that I closely agree with realism as theoretical framework. In so many ways the Western World stands on the shoulders of Greek thinkers, but the importance of Thucydides can't be over stated.



Clicky, Clicky

[Aeneas]

^^All those great Greek thinkers lying around and you took mine?
Curses, but good pick.

[Yeah_Baby]

Originally Posted by Aeneas

^^All those great Greek thinkers lying around and you took mine?
Curses, but good pick.

Haha sorry.

[Flash Walken]

Using team HeroQuest's 4th round pick, team Charlie Don't Serf is proud to select, in the catagory of Thinker / Philosopher, John Stuart Mill.

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

John Stuart Mill was an...

English philosopher, political theorist, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century whose works on liberty justified freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control.[2] He was an exponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's. He clearly set forth the premises of the scientific method.[3]

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), British philosopher, economist, moral and political theorist, and administrator, was the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century. His views are of continuing significance, and are generally recognized to be among the deepest and certainly the most effective defenses of empiricism and of a liberal political view of society and culture. The overall aim of his philosophy is to develop a positive view of the universe and the place of humans in it, one which contributes to the progress of human knowledge, individual freedom and human well-being. His views are not entirely original, having their roots in the British empiricism of John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume, and in the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham. But he gave them a new depth, and his formulations were sufficiently articulate to gain for them a continuing influence among a broad public.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/

Mill argued that in the modern age people everywhere, in Britain at least, are being freed from the bondage of custom and unnecessary regulation. Thus, for example, the essentially mediaeval apprenticeship laws, which were designed for and effective in preventing competition, were being repealed, and people freed from their shackles. Women alone remain tied to a certain role. In fact, society so educates women that they bind themselves. “Men hold women in subjection by representing to them meekness, submissiveness, and resignation of all individual will into the hands of a man, as an essential part of sexual attractiveness.” (Subjection of Women, Chapter I, p. 272)



The argument for freeing people from the tyranny of custom applies here also. Women must be liberated from the shackles they are trained to voluntarily impose upon themselves. It is in their own interest and in the interests of society.


That Mill himself sometimes contributes to the tyranny of these customs does not invalidate these arguments. It merely shows that Mill, like persons everywhere, cannot always free themselves from the irrationalities of their age.


Essential to the liberation of women is securing for them the ballot: he was a strong supporter of women's suffrage. While a member of Parliament, he supported the Reform Bill of 1867. But he also moved an amendment which, if passed, would have given women the vote. Naturally, it failed.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/#StaWom

You can find all of his hugely important works, as well as his autobiography here.

I can still remember reading On LIberty for the first time. Epoch moment in my life.

[octothorp]

For the Explorer category, Strange Things Afoot at the Circle K selects David Thompson, a geographer who single-handedly mapped a full fifth of North America with such accuracy that many of his maps were not improved on until satellite mapping was introduced.

He worked as a trader for first the Hudson Bay Company and then the Northwest Company, establishing trading posts along his way. He also helped map out the Canadian/American border west of Lake Superior. All of this with many of his 13 children following him around. He and his wife were married for 58 years - the longest known pre-confederation marriage in Canada - though unfortunately they died in poverty and obscurity.

It wasn't until Joseph Tyrrell (the famed geologist/paleontologist) found his journals and advocated him as one of the greatest land-mappers ever that he got his due. His contemporary explorer, Alexander MacKenzie, considered him a vastly superior geographer and Tyrrell lauded him as the greatest land geographer who ever lived.

Here's a great writeup on his life and work: http://www.davidthompsonthings.com/geog1.html

Unfortunately, no historical image of Thompson exists, so here's a postage stamp.

[troutman]

I thought of David Thompson too. Nice pick.

[Displaced Flames fan]

I thought I might be able to get Thompson next round. I forgot that most of you are Canadian. DUH.

[Berger_4_]

Originally Posted by troutman

I thought of David Thompson too. Nice pick.

Me three. Pick up in a minute.

[Berger_4_]

So...I'll take Simon Fraser, explorer extraordinaire!



He did lots of cool stuff. Charted the entire Fraser River and helped establish our border at the 49th Parallel.

http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.0...p?&id_nbr=4437

[Montana Moe]

What are the chances that Simon Fraser ended up being the one to chart the Fraser River?


My next selection in the Eastern category is Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu



Though it is debated whether he actually existed, Sun Tzu lives on through his masterpiece of military strategy and tactics titled The Art of War.

It is understood through the style of warfare described that Sun Tzu was a military leader in the Warring States Period between 476–221 B.C.

The Art of War is required reading in many professional settings including the U.S. Marine Corps, Fortune 500 companies, and entrepeneurial hotel heiresses:


Per Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_tzu

Sun's The Art of War has influenced many notable figures. Traditional histories recount that the first emperor of a unified China, Qin Shi Huang, considered the book invaluable in ending the Age of Warring States. Japan was introduced to The Art of War c. 760 CE, and the book quickly became popular among Japan's generals. The publication also significantly influenced the unification of Japan. Mastery of its teachings was considered a mark of respect among the samurai, and its teachings were both exhorted and exemplified by influential samurai...

Communist Chinese leader Mao Zedong partially credited his defeat of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang in 1949 to The Art of War. The work strongly influenced Mao's writings about guerrilla warfare, which further influenced communist insurgencies around the world. During the Gulf War in the 1990s, General Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. practiced Sun's principles of deception, speed, and attacking the enemy's weakness.

Mark McNeilly writes in Sun Tzu and the Art of Modern Warfare that a modern interpretation of Sun and his importance throughout Chinese history is critical in understanding China's push to becoming a superpower in the 21st century. Modern Chinese scholars explicitly rely on historical strategic lessons and The Art of War in developing their theories, seeing a direct relationship between their modern struggles and those of China in Sun's time. There is a great perceived value in Sun's teachings and other traditional Chinese writers, which are used regularly in developing the strategies of the Chinese state and its leaders.

Sun Tzu could be placed in about half of the categories listed in this draft, but I'll relegate him to Eastern for the time being.

[Berger_4_]

Originally Posted by Montana Moe

What are the chances that Simon Fraser ended up being the one to chart the Fraser River?

I know eh??? Pretty astronomical I think!

I was reading a little bit about Alexander MacKenzie, and did you know he originally named what is now the MacKenzie River, the Disappointment River? He was all upset because the river he took ended up not being the North West Passage.

[troutman]

Strange - I can't see the draft board again.

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by troutman

Strange - I can't see the draft board again.

Strange

- Allow anyone with the link to view (no sign-in required)
- People can view this item without signing in

[troutman]

Now I can see it.