I rede ne bischel Bayerische, aber hochdeutsch kan I net . . . so I'm really not qualified to rate Herr Shicklegruber (Adolf).
The OP reallly erred, IMHO, by omitting Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I'd put him squarely second after Lincoln, and ahead of Churchill and JFK, in that order. Why George Bush is even on that list is beyond me.
Maybe you peeps have forgotten about FDR. Maybe many of you never knew to begin with, but the man was a stellar orator. Roosevelt came into office at the darkest point of the depression, and told us, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Millions of desperate and despairing Americans tuned in to his weekly radio "fireside chats" for moral support.
He famously told Americans, "This generation has a rendevous with destiny."
People forget, but there was strong, even majority American isolationist sentiment against getting involved in WWll, even as Great Britian stood alone against the Nazi onslaught. Roosevelt dragged us kicking and screaming to England's aid, with the cleverly conceived
Lend Lease Act. He won support for it with this analogy, "If your neighbor's house is on fire, do you not lend him a hose, in order to prevent the fire from spreading to your house?" His persuasive rhetoric was credited with getting the bill through a balky and unccoperative Congress.
But folks, for the Gettysburg address alone. Abraham Lincoln is the sine qua non of American orators. It was, and is, a speech for the ages. And as we all know, he wrote the damn thing himelf on the back of an envelop. For all those who didn't vote Linclon, I'm going to include it here in toto. As long as mankind lives on this planet, this speech will endure. It is pure unadultered poetry:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who died here that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have hallowed it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is rather for us the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
In WWll, when England stood alone, it was Winston Churchill who kept them standing:
We shall go on to the end . . . we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender . . . "
That speech still gives me chills, as does John Fitzgerald Kennedy's 1961 inauguration speech:
Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge--and more. ~
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility--I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it--and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.
We, America, the Western world, were lucky to have such men when we needed them most. They were stirring examples of all that's best in the Anglo-American tradition. They were leaders, they were men!
Today, we have fallen so far. Our current "leader" smirks like a chimp expecting a banana when he reads the words his handlers have provided correctly off the teleprompter. To millions of Americans, he suddenly makes John Kerry look like a stellar choice for President. Only the Dub could do
that. :roll:
Edit:I see you added MLK, Jr. I'll gladly put him on my list, he was an eloquent and stirring public speaker.
