What has had a greater effect on history: idealists or practical people?

[Insomniac]

Marx or Lenin? Garrison or Lincoln? Jesus or Paul?

Great movements in history are always shaped by two things: the idea of what should be, and the act of getting there, or as close as possible. It isn't always represented in two or more people as the examples above, but it's always those two forces.

It's easy to say both are equally necessary, but that's a cop-out, and we all know it.

People of action are always going to do something. Whether or not Mohamed got grabbed round the throat and told to recite, he was going to try to shake things up around him. But, he certainly didn't attract people to him solely because he wanted to shake things up. Many, probably most of his followers, shared his vision. If he'd had different ideas, he'd have had different followers, or maybe none.

If you don't have Garrison agitating without any room for compromise whatsoever, the Civil War probably doesn't happen when it does. You can argue that the abolitionist movement never gains any ground and Lincoln (and the Republican party) don't gain power, not when they do, anyhow. But never could Garrison hold political office (because of his own views on the matter), and if he'd tried, his radicalism would have failed, utterly and spectacularly, when put into practice. Look at John Brown, although I'm not sure exactly what you'd call him. He certainly wasn't practical, he was definitely very stupid, but he was obviously a man of action with great ambition. And inspired by Garrison, in part.

Ambitious and practical people are always going to be around, latching onto whatever gives them a chance to scale up the ladder of power (lol Obama). But as with Obama, his rhetoric connected with people and inspired them. Had he used different rhetoric (had he been a second Alan Keyes), his political maneuverings and campaign's savvy would have been for naught. In a less able person's mouth, the same ideas have been stillborn.

So which has had more impact, what people aim for, or how they go there?

[IdiotBrain]

Practical people get shit done.

The end.

[DjAg]

Practical people add pages, ideological people add bookmarks.

Idealists ftw, though the "cop out" is the only true answer. Their synergistic effects are the only ones that matter in the end.

edit:: I know I technically made a mistake, but I feel that it still represents the point I was trying to make.

[l2decaro]

With all due respect, your take on John Brown is wrong--very wrong, in every respect. You write: "He certainly wasn't practical, he was definitely very stupid, but he was obviously a man of action with great ambition. And inspired by Garrison, in part."

As a biographer and student of the man, I find that a lot of otherwise bright and thoughtful people frequently make these kinds of unstudied, problematic, almost "gossipy" kinds of statements about Brown. He is the most skewed, slanted, and misunderstood figure because most people--including yourself--deal in rhetoric, not historical fact.

Brown was an extremely practical person. He may not have been the best businessman (probably because he was not primarily profit-driven), but contrary to the rhetoric of second-hand scholarship, his business failures were largely due to the lack of national currency and a terrible economy. Lots of people went bankrupt and failed in business in his day, but only Brown gets blamed for it.

To say that he was "stupid" is also reckless and not at all a fact of record. Brown was very bright and had the respect of people in every state and place where he lived or traveled. He kept records, worked the developing media of his day, and was actually quite progressive as to new technologies and was an extensive reader. Why you say he was "stupid" is just based on your own ignorance and bias, probably informed by "hearsay" writers who themselves only repeat what they hear.

Almost from the beginning, journalists, politicians, and then historians followed the "official" record of the Harper's Ferry raid according to the slave masters' testimony. This is how people got the notion that "the slaves didn't support Brown," and that it was a "crazy" idea. But if you get past the bias and rhetoric and do broader and deeper research (and most scholars never research Brown, they only talk about him), one will find that Brown did advance work, made good connections with local blacks in Harper's Ferry, and actually had the support of many people. Brown knew that the armory was under civilian supervision and he easily took it like he had planned; his problem was delaying there, otherwise he could have pulled off the raid. He admitted repeatedly that he made a tactical error and he was not disappointed by the response of enslaved people. I write this to underscore the fact that you have absolutely no basis in history to make the blunt, insulting remarks about Brown that you make so self-assuredly. He was bright, well-respected, yes ambitious, but not personally or selfishly so--something that cannot be said about many "American heroes."

Finally, you say that he was "partially" influenced by Garrison. That's probably wrong too. Of course, all anti-slavery people appreciated and admired Garrison, and most followed him in whole or part. But Brown was no follower of Garrison. He seems to have had long-term relationships with Quakers, but even these did not persuade him as to "moral suasion"--pacifism. If any abolitionist can be said NOT to have been influenced by Garrison, it is John Brown, who made no attempt to reach out to Garrison, either before or after he became a public figure. Brown actually disdained (in a kind way) anti-slavery pacifists like Garrison, Phillips, and others because he felt their tongues ("talk talk") got in the way of taking real action. In the end, Brown tried to do something to diffuse slavery by introducing a strategy--NOT insurrection as the slave masters insisted-- that was intended to lead off enslaved people and traumatize the economy of the South as his movement grew. He actually was trying to minimize slavery by his program of fight-flight. But of course he is grossly misrepresented even in this because people believe movies and novels more than real research, not to mention the underlying sectional and racial prejudice that informs anti-Brown imagination.

Perhaps you are a more fair-minded thinker, but your description caught my attention as yet another hollow, unwarranted, and mistaken characterization of Brown. This is the kind of stuff that fills blogs and forums on the internet and it shows the degree of error that has infused (largely white) people's thinking on John Brown.

L. DeCaro Jr.

[Archangel]

This is the weirdest kind of spam I've come across in my life.

[justhere]

I think they are equal in worth. I don't see it as a escaping accountability either.

If you have unrealistic ideals, they cannot be implemented; instead of being a visionary, you are delusional. It may be harder to adapt an ideological standpoint to function within societal standards, but it is the only way the concepts gain merit. It doesn't have to be realized, but it can't be wholly rejected.

The pragmatist's focus appears more easy to apply to our world, but if you are looking at grandiose ideas and whether the idealist is more beneficial to the process than a pragmatist, I don't see the value in separating their roles from the end consequence.

You need ingenuity to innovate new ideas and comprehension of the world to apply them. Each aspect gains merit when coalesced into a form of government, theological doctrine, or an accepted belief system that it would not achieve without its counter-part.

[Insomniac]

I'm not stupid enough to try to argue with a biographer, even if he did make an account on the Gorillamask forums for such a silly reason. So I'll clarify that I called him stupid for having a plan that was about as practical as the Columbine boys hijacking a plane to take into a building, regardless of tactical flaws.

And I understand Garrison's views were not at all Browns except maybe believing how sinful it was. It wasn't that they agreed so much as Garrison's agitation and newspaper forced the issue before Brown even started his abolitionist activities and was more or less the center of the intellectual abolitionist movement.

Obviously, I'm overfond of Garrison and overstate his importance, but you're incredibly oversensitive to criticism of Brown. I'm no academic and very reliant on other people's works, but from Henry Mayer's biography "All on Fire," as much as they lauded the memory of "Osawatomie Brown" and his aims, other abolitionists very much thought Brown was a reckless fantatic then, too.

It's like Nat Turner. Whatever he was trying to do, it could only end badly for him and those with him. If he did know this, he was in someway a fanatic with an eye toward martyrdom, if he didn't, he was mentally-unhinged at some level or intellectually deficient at another. None of that means Turner deserves to be villified, but extremists are always going to provoke that kind of reaction.

[Archangel]

Is "idealists" the proper word here?


Plus, I remember there having been a very similar thread by Insomniac on the old GMF - something along the likes of a few great people v the aggregate common man...

[Insomniac]

Is "idealists" the proper word here?


Plus, I remember there having been a very similar thread by Insomniac on the old GMF - something along the likes of a few great people v the aggregate common man...

It probably isn't, but "intellectuals" has a connotation that also probably isn't right. Jesus/Paul/Constantine. None of them were dumb, but they had different ways of thinking.

And I had the same thought again as that old topic, but I wanted to avoid going over the same ground, at least at first, because I don't have anything new to say myself.