Iconochasms
We hope you're happy with the personalities that The Political Compass has placed you closest to, but how well do you really know the famous figures that you love or love to hate?
This little wrap-up quiz offers some important facts that were barely, if ever, reported. It may raise your eyebrows and adjust the pedestals on which you placed some of your favourite icons. The chasm may be greater than you'd imagined.
1
)
Who said that a president under indictment and facing criminal trial would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis and cripple the operations of government?
2
)
Who twice donated to Kamala Harris’ re-election campaign to be California’s Attorney-General?
3
)
Many unpunished perpetrators of Japan’s grisly medical experiments without anaesthetic returned to high-ranking civilian occupations, including …
4
)
Who wrote that a Jewish state would be small and petty, Orthodox and illiberal, and keep out non-Jews and Christians?
5
)
Who described Hitler’s Mein Kampf as a wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organisation etc?
6
)
Who wrote the neoliberal program is not subject to democratic procedure; can’t be voted off anymore?
7
)
Who said the primary responsibility of government and, therefore, the core of the US Constitution is to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority?
8
)
Who in 2008 praised the Clintons as friends (and contributed to Hillary’s senatorial campaigns), describing her as a tough woman who would go down in history at a minimum as a great senator?
9
)
Which US president planned the $1 trillion modernisation of every nuclear weapon in the stockpile, as well as pursuing a new generation of nuclear armed submarines, new nuclear bomber aircraft and new land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles?
10
)
Who wrote of the impeccable economic logic of dumping the West’s health-impairing toxic waste in under polluted Africa because the resultant cancers wouldn’t have time to develop in a population with such a low life expectancy?
11
)
Who wrote: When the Know-Nothings get control, it [the Declaration of Independence] will read: “All men are created equal except negroes, foreigners and Catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy
12
)
Who in 1997 championed the privatisation of California's National Oil Reserve, and the subsequent drilling by Occidental that resulted in serious environmental damage, destruction to a sacred Indian burial ground and a windfall for his family trust's Occidental stocks? (Occidental also put a pipeline through the Colombian rain forest.)
13
)
Who described the UK’s decision to join the US invasion of Iraq as in the British national economic interest?
14
)
Who said I have a horrible feeling that we are sinking into a police state?
15
)
Which US Republican president wrote this?Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
16
)
Who, commenting on the deaths of more than half a million children, said I think that this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it?
17
)
Who said that the introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals?
18
)
Who signed legislation permitting doctors to remove the life support system of patients in a persistent vegetative state, regardless of the wishes of the family?
19
)
Who (1) worked for Senator McCarthy during his red witch hunts and
(2) permitted J.Edgar Hoover to wiretap Martin Luther King?
20
)
These so-called ill-treatments and torturing in concentration camps, stories of which were spread everywhere amongst the people, and particularly by detainees who were liberated by the occupying armies, were not, as assumed, inflicted methodically, but by individual leaders, sub-leaders, and men who laid violent hands on them.Who made that statement?
21
)
Who proposed thatWhosoever shall be guilty of rape, polygamy, or sodomy with a man or woman, shall be punished; if a man, by castration, a woman, by boring through the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch in diameter at the least?
22
)
Who held that spiritual characteristics are tied to skin colour and that non-white skin colour is a sign of spiritual defects that would be expunged in a future race war?
23
)
Who saidShort of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war?
24
)
Who wrote in 1928 thatIt may be shrewdly forecast that no man will exhibit dimensions of permanent greatness equal to Mussolini?
25
)
Immediately following the German invasion of the USSR, which future US President said the following?If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way we let them kill as many as possible.
26
)
Who said Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed; those who are cold and are not clothed?
27
)
Who said I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature … Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion?To make half the world fools and half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the world.?
28
)
Who said Japan was already defeated … dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary. I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was no longer necessary to save American lives?
29
)
Who accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle — the highest medal that Nazi Germany could bestow on foreigners — in July 1938, four months after the German annexation of Austria?
30
)
With reference to Tiger Woods’ first Golf Masters win, who said there’ll be a spectacular increase in the number of black boys (and I do mean boys - teenagers) who begin to infest the public courses in America?
31
)
Who presented Chairman Mao Zedong with a bouquet of poems that lavishly praised the Chinese leader as the timely rain to nourish the land?
32
)
Who blocked the marriage of his son and disowned him, commenting How can I, who has always advocated renunciation of sex, encourage you to gratify it?(The son subsequently became a homeless alcoholic.)
33
)
Which founding father said of the proposed American Constitution This is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism … when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other ?
34
)
Who said The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success. I’m not sure that I would as of today push it as hard as I once did.?
35
)
Who said of Saddam Hussein He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours ?
36
)
Who said of containment against Saddam Hussein We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt?
37
)
Who said: I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed?
38
)
Who said: I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes … to spread a lively terror ?
39
)
Who granted several audiences to, and received a donation of more than $1 million from Shoko Asahara, leader of the Supreme Truth cult of Japan, and spreader of sarin gas in the Tokyo subway?
40
)
Which politician travelled to Indonesia and received a $10 million donation from dictator Suharto to help party funds, while avoiding criticism of Indonesia’s repressive policies, including political imprisonment?
41
)
Who warned of the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the US military-industrial complex and its potential to endanger liberties and the democratic processes ?
42
)
With reference to World War One, who said: If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable (as Hitler) to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations?
43
)
Who was an enthusiastic and uncritical guest of the dictatorships of Haiti and Albania, and the phalangists in Lebanon?
44
)
Who referred to the Munich chapter of the German Communist Party as chaotic, filthy and full of Jews?
45
)
With reference to the US conquest and annexation of a third of Mexico, who said: What has miserable, inefficient Mexico to do with the great mission of peopling the New World with a noble race?
46
)
Who urged suspicious attention to any proposed new law or regulation that comes from businessmen, because they have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public?
47
)
Who wrote of God: He says naïvely, outspokenly and without suggestion of embarrassment “I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God.”It is only another way of saying “I, the Lord thy God, am a small God; fretful about small things”?
48
)
Who declared homosexuality to be immoral and disgusting ?
49
)
Who said this ? To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day hero … assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an un-winnable urban guerilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability.
50
)
Who paid an official visit to China, described Beijing as ghastly and warned a group of foreign students If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed?
51
)
Who demonised Jews and urged the destruction of their synagogues and houses, the seizing of their valuables and the denial of their prayer books and passports?
52
)
Who expressed humanitarian abhorrence of the death penalty, declaring that to kill a man in a paroxysm of passion is understandable, but to have him killed by someone else after calm and serious meditation and on the pretext of duty honourably discharged is incomprehensible?
53
)
Who, commenting on World War Two, said: Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs?
54
)
Which country elected a World War II fascist war criminal (Class A) as a peacetime leader?
55
)
Which faith still requires its ministers/priests to condone capital punishment?
56
)
Who described Benito Mussolini as that admirable Italian gentleman?
57
)
Which faith organisation warned that the acquisition and practice of music is unfavourable to the health of the soul?
58
)
The pro-fascist leaders of which company joined the DuPont family in plotting a military coup against President F.D.Roosevelt in 1933?