I do think the lack of a "D" category puts the spin on the selections as being more positive or top heavy and doesn't allow for the distinctions of the more poorly rated
If he's using the site I think he's using, he should have been able to add, delete, or even re-name his tiers. Probably just didn't care enough to figure out how.
@@PsychicWars Shapiro is so ignorant of history I don't know why anyone would bother listening to his drivel much less responding to it. The Declaration of Independence is NOT part of the Constitution, Jefferson was NOT a Federalist, and CRA of 1964 DOES prohibit discrimination in the private sector. This is basic stuff that Shapiro doesn't know.
"S" is more about Japanese video games than anything. I'm pretty sure if Ben went with A, B, C and D it would be fine and he wouldn't need to act like he doesn't understand this world, but he's just gonna roll with it.
@nodical802 Was it possible to actually change tho? I mean teddy did his stuff as, imo, it's economic, which coolidges issues would have been more cultural. Eh idk
The hard part with the "F tier" in this set up, and you as a teacher would know this Mr. Terry, is that F is such a broad range. 0 to 65 is all failing, whereas A, B, C are very clear about the range the person falls in. Like Ben might see LBJ as a 45, FDR as a 30, Obama as a 60, and Wilson as a 0, but they would all be an F.
I would love to see your own version of the presidential tier list. If it’s easier you could break up the presidents into two groups/videos one covering the first 23 and then the second video the remaining ones. Or you could even break them up even more and then do videos with only 6 presidents at a time, or whatever number you think is best. That way you don’t few rushed and can get to every point you would like to mention.
🤣🤣🤣🤣 I couldn't understand how he couldn't understand that the hatred people have for Trump is due to his mostly out-of-context *speeches* and false assumptions. No lie, Trump shot himself in the foot sometimes.
It's a shame that so many presidents place themselves in my personal C tier because although they spent half their time as president doing great things, they spent the other half committing atrocities. A specific example is Andrew Jackson. And we all know why
@@sifibruh7055 yeah, after listening to his biography, the only thing he did that truelly impress me was set up precedent for Lincoln to use when Jackson told South Carolina and their secession plan to go to hell.
Andrew Jackson: Pros: Expanded voting rights from landowners to common men, fought the Bank and Won, and is he only President to pay off our National Debt. Cons: The Trail of Tears, which was terrible, but I think it was inevitable, because Jackson wasn’t the only one who wanted to move the Native American Indians.
We've seen Mr. T and VTH react to a conservative's ranking of the US Presidents. I'd like them to do a reaction to a liberal/progressive's ranking now.
Well, VTH's combined ranking of every president together with Mr Beat provided some interesting insight into his criterias for judging a presidency imo
I don't know if there's too many well known American TH-camrs who would consider themselves progressives who have done US Presidents rankings. Just like with conservatives, there's a lot of non-Americans who talk about stuff. There's also just the element of is it really necessary or a useful practice? I know as a Canadian who leans left I'd have a different ranking but I also would have a hard time choosing based off of what's best for the USA since I'm not American and I think that there's major issues with documents considered foundational to the USA.
@@taylore6582 Obama was so middle of the road and milk toast when comes to presidents. To say a president that lied his way into the start of a 20 year, and left the country in a depression after being handed a budgetary surplus and the largest economic expansion since fdr was better than Obama is just partisan hackery
It works both ways. I would have placed Obama and Bush Jr. exactly as he did. Am I a conservative? Absolutely. Most liberals would place Obama much higher. That’s also a bias. He was a so-so president at best.
The problem with saying Truman should’ve provided more support to Chiang Kai-Shek would be the fact that it doesn’t take into account how corrupt Chiang was. He often kept the funds provided in his own personal treasury. Plus the temporary ceasefire they had during the civil war 1949 in China didn’t help either.
Yeah plus how he ruled his government in exile on taiwan. It was only after he died and a bit later that taiwan started becoming what it is today and not how mainland CCP China is about recapturing all the rightful Chinese land or whatever nowadays.
FDR at the bottom? HAHA. FDR inherited a bankrupt country and delivered a victorious superpower. Nixon also ended the Vietnam War and isolated the USSR. Also, a confrontation with the USSR for the Hungarian Revolution would have probably ended in a nuclear war. I believe he is very biased.
I feel like a lot of folks just saw the title, made a bunch of assumptions, and commented without watching. They're saying a lot of nonsense in these comments..
Here's my issue on Jimmy Carter: Shapiro literally gave credit to Reagan for Paul Volker, but it was Jimmy Carter who actually appointed him. Reagan gets credit for two big things Jimmy Carter did: the terrorist hostage negotiations & Paul Volker. As a history teacher, this should be pointed out since it's clear in written records we have today
He was too nice and good of a person to be President. Carter wasn’t the type to go blast Reagan even if it’d have been justified. Same with Ulysses S Grant. Too naive and good of a person. The corruption in his cabinet (that he himself had nothing to do with) was able to happen because time and again he trusted the wrong people. He got swindled more times than I can count, every time by a “business partner “ who left him holding the bag. But even when he was chopping firewood and walking 20 miles into St Louis every day to sell it, his father in law gifted him a slave. He actually became friendly with him and within a few months gave him his freedom. Which would be like giving a home that had the mortgage paid off away for free. Average monthly income was $17 and he could have sold him for $1000+ easy. This was right before the war and he desperately need the money. But he didn’t. Idk man after reading Chernows bio on Grant I can see how it’s not always the winners who write history.
I’ve long thought, and I say this as a staunch conservative, Carter was not successful, but nowhere near as bad as he is portrayed by many. A decent, sincere man who didn’t have strong leadership skills and was in way over his head during an extremely difficult time in history.
@@patrickc3419 those are fair criticisms. The times were different and Jimmy wasn't put in a position to really succeed nor was he probably the right man for the times. He was handed the inflation crisis. However he had several missteps too. At the end of the day, I don't know any president when viewed honestly I can't say both positive and negative things about. Some have way more negatives and much more questionable motives than Jimmy to your point 👍
Terry, he's not a libertarian, he's a conservative. Maybe old school to the extent he might have some libertarian tendencies, but he's definitely a conservative.
@@emmanuellawyer8562 banning abortion is letting the government punish people for having an abortion. It's not libertarian, that's the opposite, it's authoritarian.
George Washington struggled with the idea of slavery later in life and wrote a letter to a friend saying he hoped America would gradually end slavery. Specific issues he was concerned with for his own slaves were, he did not have the finances necessary to free them under Virginia law. There were also the Dower slaves that had married and had children with his slaves who he had no authority to free, and freeing his own slaves would result in families being separated. I think he was also concerned about his reputation. Being a war hero was something he was proud of and he would not want that reputation damaged. He solved the money problem and the pride problem by putting the freedom of his slaves into his will. Abraham Lincoln was strongly opposed to slavery and spoke out against it many times, but he also understood that at the time neither Congress, nor the President had the authority to free the slaves, that authority belonged to the States. It took an Amendment to the Constitution to officially end slavery legally, which can only be done if a significant amount of Americans already believed slavery should end. Both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln believed slavery would end on its own. Even without the war it probably would have ended eventually.
Wishful thinking at best free almost limitless workforce is not something that would just go away they had a war about its human nature to get over on someone if you can they never felt morally wrong for owning slaves or they would have never done it
@@malikwatson857 i feel like you're missing the political context. The North wanted to end slavery, the South did not, the North had almost 3 times as many people as the South did. Abraham Lincoln and the other Republicans, had the war not happened, would have admitted more free states, rather than slave states, and eventually the political power would have been thrown out of balance and the North would have been able to abolish slavery. This would have taken decades longer though, so I'm thankful that history forced Lincoln's hand.
washington moved his slaves over state lines in order to reset the clock on having to free them. Sure he may have been conflicted but he didn’t not free them because he didn’t have the finances to do so.
He did have nice sentiments, but you're mistaken about the slaves. Washington did not free his slaves. They continued to serve Martha even after he passed.
Him being Jewish introduces an incredible bias when it comes to American politics. It's more than a little ironic that he still chooses to side with the party that coddles neo-nazis.
@@-Ricky_Spanish- You mean the KKK and Southern DEMOCRATS ? Or are you still mad about when the Republicans took your slaves away. Me: *eagerly waiting you to try and say the parties "switched" so I can shoot ya down on that one real quick*
I'm sure many others said the same, but I'd love to see you do a tier list of Presidents. With everybody's tier list, ranking or other comparatives they have criteria and perspectives they use, and I think you would do a good job of establishing that up front, which is a huge help. He had a few points he was consistent on - highly ranking small government and not gathering power to the executive branch, and lowly ranking social programs...but he also was big on fighting Communism in China and Korea but against it in Vietnam. I have honestly avoided Shapiro because he's always been up front about being hyper-partisan and I'm firmly anti-partisan (go ahead, have fun with that term). I don't think anyone is truly aligned with a party, but he's sort of in a weird "talking head" space where he knows his words have an impact and he's trying to shape that to spread certain ideals, not to spread actual information. That's part of why he wasn't consistent, I think. We all generally feel our involvement in Vietnam was bad for one reason or another so he had to acknowledge that was bad, while getting involved in China is a hypothetical and people are more neutral about our involvement in Korea so he has more room to spin those. I was briefly tempted to make my own list. The main reason I'm not going to bother, though, is Washington. I would also start with him and I could not tell you where I'd put him. Part of me wants to put everyone who owned slaves in F tier, part of me wants to consider historical context, and those aren't things I can really reconcile. I was taught with more of a "consider context" perspective that gave a free pass to anyone before Congress did something about an issue, but I can't honestly say that makes sense in retrospect. We love Lincoln in spite of his racist views, violations of the constitution, and violations of what we now consider human rights because his EFFECT was hugely positive in ending slavery. Washington was the reverse though, having the effect of creating a hugely damaging history of slavery by his sponsorship of the constitution that set it in stone that lead directly to its ratification through his personal popularity. But he set good precedents for the Presidential office and was somewhat good about following the constitution...at least relative to 45 of his successors. Much like Shapiro, as a people we're inconsistent about what we like about our past Presidents based largely on emotion. We care that Washington helped us have a country at all by throwing his weight behind the plan, and that Lincoln ended slavery, and everything else is just details we learn about after we form an opinion about them. And even as I complain about it here, I can't extricate how I feel about them well enough to give an opinion on them that isn't just reacting to how I feel.
I wish there were more presidents in this list but I get it, to do EVERY president especially like ones between Washington and Lincoln, the video was already super long, I understand why he didn’t do them all, but it’d have been nice to see more.
He could have easily gotten all 45 in. And he could have graded them in any fashion he wanted to . and honestly im pretty sure thats exactly what he did. It allowed him to put more presidents in the F group and then excuse by saying he might have put them in the D but since it was mysteriously missing and being the self proclaimed genius he is could not find a way to have whatever kind of grading system he wanted and with a very narrow set of criteria based on hisown selected aspects, attributes, accomplishments, and failures, etc. Yet he purposefully picked the presidents he picked ( I suspect on his biased peraonal opinion favor or dislike. ) we know now which are his favorite presidents. And who he dislikes the most . and those who didnt do or institute. Anything too great or terrible for Ben to consider as important or relevant . And if we are being honest with ourselves we would all do the same. ( unless one is an presidential historian ).
@@djjazzyjeff1232 well yes there would've been hours years decades of research . But he could've just given an overview showing which presidents he put in each grade and then given a brief reason for any that his grade is oppositional to conventional opinion
Wilson was vociferous in support of parliamentarian democracy, he did so in his doctoral dissertation. In his doctoral dissertation in Political Science (he was granted one of the first degrees in that field, in America) he held the American way of governing and the Confederacy in contempt, and liked how the Prime Minister in a parliamentary system basically has more power constitutionally than a President in a presidential system.
@@mjbull5156 we SHOULD run congress more like a Parliament. It would do a lot to eliminate our two party system, but we should also keep the President as is with no change to a Prime Minister.
He actually said he supported FDR's handling of WWII. That was one of the positives for him. So, it doesn't seem that conflicts with his statement about being more supportive of one side over the other in China's conflict.
@@scottlemiere2024 I think the New Deal was terrible and would rank him low for that reason. There are studies that show he may have actually extended the Great Depression by years with those policies. I understand he was trying to do something to help, but I don't think we should be grading on intentions.
@@za-ir5ni Studies show that his New Deal policies may have extended the Great Depression by as long as 8 years. Also, it greatly increased the size and cost of the federal government. The fact that you think the claim is laughable without, seemingly, being aware of the data that exists is what is laughable. Next time, just proclaim your ignorance of the data rather than trying to make a subjective dismissal. I don't care about your feelings, only the stats/data/facts.
@frostbyte12 The fact that you see "as long as 8 years" and don't see the inherent flaw that makes those studies bunk is very telling. That means you think the Great Depression would have ended right away without FDR lol. Lack of critical thinking on your part. Also forgetting that if you credit WW2 for getting us out of it, you have to give FDR that credit too for his leadership and handling of the war machine. All the social welfare were good as well. Conservatives are not serious people.
@@LiberatedCastaway1 He does. He’s seen several of them and actually at one point made a video reaction to Ben Shapiro parody videos. He almost always finds them hilarious
I'm glad you called him on Vietnam. At the time of the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the US was paying 90% of the military costs and Nixon, as the VP in 54 was pushing for more involvement see "Tin and Tungsten" speech.
Yeah and all those great policies that Ben pointed out for trump in the video like he did for every other person. like what were some of the things Ben pointed out that he thought trump did that helped or hurt the country economically or some other way I remember Ben said trump had a speech had another speech and he never pointed out a thing trump did for the country or even tried to accomplish dam that’s a good president right there that not even Ben had something he accomplished that Ben thought helped anyone out true b tier right there.
Tier lists may be easy content as an opinion piece, but I fear they're too simplistic for more complex topics, even if it may have been not meant to be really serious and was just following a trend I'm unaware of. He focused his opinions on topics that are important to him and gave respective examples, which is to be expected, but it's not very satisfactory as the explanations seem kind of one sided and ignorant of for example social climates at the time. Especially the amplification of the war on drugs and the overall more negative consequences would put someone like Reagan automatically in a lower tier in my opinion. As someone not from the US I can't stand the American dominated online political sphere due to its utter lack of nuance and ridiculous sports team behavior and I'm not sure if videos like this help people understand each other more, or accidentally gave people "arguments" to throw around. Your commentary and context input was definitely making it worth a watch, though I put it on 1.5 speed.
@@tamberlame27 for a one to one comparison I belive what FDR did made him worse than Ragan. There was the court stacking, welfare, social security, income tax, and the beginning of the war industrial complex. All of this caused our debt to skyrocket to an insane degree and prolonged the depression for years until the war happend. Regan had the war on drugs which wasn't bad but still inflated that debt along with increased military spending which caused the collapse of the soviet union.
@@MK-ok6yp You also forgot about Reagan cutting welfare programs and organizing rallies on spots where Afro-Americans and pro-black suffrage activists were lynched. Also how he made up stories about African-American woman with 11 names abusing welfare programs and saying how that totally happend. Also the great switch where parties switched places and Republican party became party of mostly white conservatives. He basically made life fir the lower classes a lot harder while talking about trickle down economics that were proven to be bullshit. He should be F for Fucking up so much.
Interesting how he really only brought up racism for the “liberal” presidents, and completely ignored any racist statements or policies for many of the conservative presidents.
Note that he gleefully gave Obama an F for "adding 4 trilion to the debt". Never mind GWB added nearly 12 trillion and Trump added over 6 trillion in just four years.
@@djjazzyjeff1232 How is that very different? Budget is spending compared to your income, and the difference is either surplus or debt. Both Trump and GWB added significantly more debt to America than Obama, because their budgets increased spending without increasing income. The GOP loves to talk about fiscal responsibility, but talking is all they do. In reality, they spend wildly and leave it for the next guy to figure out.
Mr. Terry, I highly appreciate your fair, unbiased analysis of Ben’s video. In today’s polarized political sphere, presenting him in a fair light is incredibly refreshing. Thank you sir, respect
Shapiro is Jewish so I assume moving the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem and the Abraham Accords would both feature prominently in his list of accomplishments.
(Alleged) Fun fact, Andrew Jackson once sent Buchanan to Europe because Jackson absolutely despised him, he’s even (allegedly) quoted as saying “I want him as far away from this country as possible”
With Jefferson A. The Embargo Act wrecked the US economy, and B. Jefferson was not a Federalist, he massively increased the size and power of the executive branch, in fact other conservatives hate Jefferson for not consulting congress about the Louisiana purchase as it broke with the legal precedent that the presidents powers were limited to those explicitly dictated by the constitution.
Jefferson was the example president in my class of how tariffs are more complicated economically than you'd think they'd be. We also learned about what the general climate of campaigning was during that period. Edit: the loyalty thing was mostly Jackson apperantly. Old AJ was at it again.
This is the first video I saw and I already like you because you at least acknowledge the other perspectives on Abraham Lincoln. Most people won't even entertain the idea because it counters the information they have been spoon fed.
I really like your analysis of Ben's takes. I think Ben has good points, but like you say, he lacks the historical context. Eisenhower did not know how the things would turn out by not acting. And we will never know what would be different if he did it differently.
You can't use the excuse of Eisenhower not making the correct choices as a reason why he shouldn't be criticized. One criteria you judge a leader by is whether he has the foresight to make the correct choices.
I think that's fine though because he did it consistently. For all presidents, he ignored the historical context and just judged them based on the actual results of their actions. If he was ignoring the context with some and taking it into account with others it would be a sign that he's purposely injecting bias into the list but since he did the same thing with everyone I think it's a fair way to judge presidents. Not the only way, taking historical context into consideration would be another way to do it, but there are more than one valid ways to make a list like this.
Part of the problem with that statement is that most of the modern American political “left” would be considered “far left”, they’ve moved radically left over the last 10 years. While the “far right” is maybe 5,000 people, most of whom are online trolls.
@@TheArbiterOfTruth I don't know where you got that from! America's Overton window (the politics viewed as acceptable within the mainstream) has really only been shifting to the right since Reagan's presidency. While there have been efforts to make leftist ideology more mainstream (some of which has especially picked up steam in younger folks) America remains with a relatively center-leaning leftist voting base. (Also, there are more than 5,000 people in the "far right" or "alt right" today, just look at Unite The Right 2017, an estimated 500-1500 people showed up to a SINGLE far right protest. I doubt that was over 20% of all of them in the US.)
@@TheArbiterOfTruth equally so, I can say without numbers but from life experience, that I know just as many far right loons as I do left. Not that many. Most people can agree and meet relatively middle when all the information is accurate and available. The media is good at spotlighting the fringes and labeling the whole group. And dividing everyone.
@@TheArbiterOfTruth except what is considered far left is actually center-- it is that the right just became more authoritarian, fascist, and theocratic
@@belikewater420 that’s also a good point. I’m relatively centrist. I guess I could be best described as a “right leaning centrist”, but almost no one on the left will have a conversation with me 😂
Coolidge’s policies did not cause the Great Depression. That’s actually a misnomer. There were a lot of economic factors at play that really were inevitable to result in a recession. It was outside of Coolidge’s control at that point. Also, Hoover is the one one who truly botched the issue and turned a recession into a depression.
Prohibition also contributed as the taxation of alcohol made up a decent percentage of federal tax revenue, and that severely hurt the government's budget.
@@catalyst1641 Yeah there was a lot. Prohibition, the end of World War One reducing the demand for food(which thus reduced foods value), people being unfamiliar with how credit works, etc. There are a lot of reasons. And Hoover’s Smoot-Hawley tariff act turned a Great Recession into a Great Depression.
The Smoot Hawley tariff played a bigger role than the stock market crash in leading to the great depression. And guess who signed the tariff into law. Herbert Hoover.
Honestly I don't put much stock into tier lists. It's always based on what, opinions. Now with something like presidents it's even harder because, as you talked about, it's hard to put in perspective the time period as well as the conditions each president had to handle. But even more than that, each president did good and bad things for the country. However for those people living during those administrations, what was good for one person could be bad for another and vise versa. So it's all a matter of opinion and what holds more weight to an individual. All I know is where am I right at this moment. Everything is the way it is because a culmination of every one of those presidents. The good the bad and the ugly has all lead is to where we are now and for me personally I am happy in my life.
No, its actually extremely easy. "If you are a president when slavery was legal, and you did not end slavery, you automatically get an F, no matter what else you did, no matter how good, you and your administration decided it was fine to have people as property. If you are a president before the civil rights act was signed, you automatically get your final grade lowered to a D. If you declared a war on a country that did not attack us, you get a D- at the highest." We have not had a single president we should be proud of, only single measures or small economic packages that individually get a B or an A, but overall, that president is still a failure until we have real reform in this country.
As a Libertarian I partially agree with Ben's stances. I do want to say my favorite President WAS Calvin Coolidge and I don't agree that it's his fault for the crash of 1929 or the Depression. As the Scholar Robert Kirby said "President Coolidge had no jurisdiction over the stock exchanges in the cities throughout America-the two largest of which, in New York City, were chartered in New York and subject to the laws of the State of New York. Coolidge had no approval authority over the Federal Reserve System. Its authority was derived from statutes enacted by the U.S. Congress and the System was subject only to Congressional oversight." I remember reading how WW1 destabilized the currencies and exchange rates across the world and it was hard to keep gold in the U.S. If anything, I would blame the Federal Reserve from 1929-1933 over Coolidge.
I've seen a lot of Ben's stuff and it seems that as far as ben's stance on interventionism goes its financial is ok sending Americans to die is not, so wwi bad because we were not adequately attacked to warrant militaristic involvement but wwii is fine because of pearl harbor. So what he meant in the chiang kai shek statment was fund him to not send Americans to die in china.
I guarantee is Israel decided to invade Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan, to "regain" the territory of the 12 tribes Shapiro would turn jingoist in a heartbeat and be demanding America launch a "special military operation" to aid the poor oppressed Israelis who "just want what was rightfully given to them by Gawd."
Yikes buddy. Iv listened to his podcast everyday for years and you only skimmed the surface of these topics. I can only assume your being dishonest seeing as how you wrote the most cherrypicked paragraph iv ever seen about someone else's opinion.
People do care about speeches, it gives them ammunition to prove their points of argument. Abraham Lincoln was hated by many people, the Presidential Museum in Springfield, IL has a lot of evidence to this effect. But one of the best points for Speeches is the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address. These speeches were very important and still are as they are used even today to make valid points.
As a Conservative, it's great hearing you being able to disagree with him without having to call him names, this is why you're amazing, Mr Terry. Although I think he did pretty well with the ranking of Presidents, I don't really have any say in it because I'm not American...
As a Canadian conservative, it’s refreshing to be able to debate and interest with apolitical/moderate/liberal supporters and not be called a Nazi or a misogynist racist.
I have seen that UCLA paper, and it presents an intriguing case. However, it is an academic paper focused on only the economic potential of the US at the time. It is not a broader study. I would argue that social pressure was just as important at the time. The corporate world had been given to rampant speculation. So people had a hard time, especially people who didn't participate, trusting corporations. It is unlikely that people would have been so trusting of those groups. Which means that taking advantage of the potential economic resources would have been limited. So, I don't agree that FDR extended it. However, I think you can make a case for mismanagement. But, again I think the social pressures, where he fully stepped in, were more important at the time.
The problem with hindsight analysis like that is that it often assumes that people will behave rationally. Without FDR, we very well may have ended up with the Silver Legion as a major political force.
I believe the distinction he makes our involvement with the first World War and the Chinese Civil war is he wanted to more heavily fund Change Kai Shek rather than send our own soldiers to fight like we did in the first World War.
I liked your comment about FDR around 15:00 because oftentimes when you are a leader you are forced to choose from bad or worse choices - either way you are blamed for the outcome. Criticism may be warranted, but I like that you are providing additional perspectives and including that narrow snapshot in time that these leaders were dealing with. I agree that it is difficult to judge the recent things. I have found my perspectives and opinions change the farther away I get from that time period and looking back at the situation. 33:12 Before you say it, I'm thinking.... wait. I thought we didn't like hegemony? Now he says we should've interfered with an uprising across the globe? Yeah ... not sure where the fine line here is. Great video - this helps pull all that history together a little better for me. THANKS!
FDR at the bottom? HAHA. FDR inherited a bankrupt country and delivered a victorious superpower. Nixon also ended the Vietnam War and isolated the USSR. Also, a confrontation with the USSR for the Hungarian Revolution would have probably ended in a nuclear war. I believe he is very biased.
So am I the only one who wishes he was my history teacher? I had a great teacher, but he was very narrow-minded, and unwilling to accept hypothetical or “what if?” conversations. Mr. Terry gives all sides and clarifies if there are any mistakes, and I appreciate that
The vast majority of older history teachers know very little about history and basically just teach from the book. Many of them are vets who came back from Vietnam and went into teaching with a general teaching certificate and no specialty and got thrown into teaching history or math. It doesn't help that our education system doesn't really value history or any of the soft sciences like it should. When I graduated high school, we got taught snippets from US history, skipping over anything and everything that made the US look bad in any way EXCEPT slavery. That was blamed on the English that colonized the land and it was taught that we were the first to free our slaves.
The Vietnam War "Never" ended (if you're going back to Eisenhower, then you need to go back even Further to the end of WW2, where Truman reneged on the Deal made with Ho Chi Minh to get their help against the Imperial Japanese Army.)
20:23-21:00 I completely agree and have always thought that was true what you said; how hard it is to rank the recent presidents: Biden, Trump (especially), Obama, and to a lesser extent, Bush II. They’re so new that it seems that it’s impossible to have a civil conversation or debate regarding them. My personal favorites, in no specific order, would have to be: T. Roosevelt, Lincoln, Coolidge, Cleveland, Eisenhower, & Grant.
Just a note while I'm watching the video: Saying that the "Non existent regulation lead to the great depression" is a very controversial statement. There is an entire school of economics (the Austrian school) that completely denies this correlation. I suggest reading the book "America's Great Depression" from "Murray N. Rothbard" which explains this position in length. When evaluating Shapiro, which is someone who follows the Austrian school, this is a very important thing.
16:37 You corrected Mr. Shapiro by saying, "They were already a dictatorial power", but that wasn't at issue in what he said. His point was that Nixon opening trade with China allowed that regime to gain power internationally (without calling for reforms - all carrot, no stick), not that the Chinese government somehow became dictatorial through Nixon's policies.
The idea that people don't care about speeches is reflective of Mr. Terry's own recency bias. Speeches absolutely changed the world throughout history, motivating entire nations, and sometimes international support for various causes. It's only in our current tidal wave of information that individual speeches have lost value. I can certainly see Mr. Terry's point if he's weighing ALL political speeches versus important political speeches, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Ulysses S Grant is an underrated President. He’s now seen as a President who fought for equal rights for freed slaves and for passing the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution
7:00 the Emancipation Proclamation did not free slaves in the Union, it was the opposite, only in states that were in open rebellion. Northern slaves were only freed under Grant I believe.
43:47, Shapiro was a big supporter of it during the Bush Administration but since then recanted his support for several of the Bush Administration’s policies in that regard and became more of a libertarian
I think the problem that Ben was faced with was time constraints. Ben seems to be very particular about his opinions, but due to the way TH-cam is he had to pack it all into a tightly nit 20 minute video, and therefore had to either summarize, generalize, or completely gloss over certain important details or his opinions on certain topics.
The criticism of the Emancipation Proclamation isnt that it “only freed slaves in Union states” but that it didn’t free any slaves at all at the time, because it specifically granted exceptions for those Union slave areas. It was debatably an effective declaration to make the Union’s cause expressly about slavery though, IMO
I'm a conservative but I always when ranking my presidents put in context of what was going on at the time that influenced president's decisions like I would have put teddy as an a because I believe he responded to the terrible conditions of the 2nd industrial revolution well while I'll but hoover as d because his lack of action made the great depression worst than what it could've been
Hoover did a lot of government spending, which made the depression worse, and then FDR did even more government spending than Hoover, which made the depression last a decade.
@@88michaelandersen true what I think got hoover out was his stance on prohibition he wanted it to still while FDR was for overturning I personally don't think hoover was that bad of a president tho
@@avishevin1976 Government spending doesn't reduce recessions. Recessions are the result of a mismatch between the goods that are being supplied to an economy and the goods that are demanded in an economy. Government spending makes the mismatch worse in the long run. @edge Ldine The world didn't really pull out of the Great Depression until the 1950s. FDR's spending made what probably would have been a 2 year market correction into a ten year recession, and by that time World War 2 was going on and continuing to drag down standards of living around the world. A full recovery from both the Depression and the War took until at least 1950 during the Wirtschaftswunder in Austria and Germany.
Did Coolidge run the fed reserve or something? Also, the Great Depression didn't really start until after the Smoot/Hawley tariff, which was passed under Hoover.
I think it’s hilarious that Ben Shapiro is one of those conservatives who rages against Big Tech and accepts sponsorships from Ring who just got caught giving away recordings without warrants I believe.
He isn’t one that’s against “big tech” as much as he is against things that are privacy infringing. This video was also recorded like 3 years ago, before those things came out, I don’t believe he is with ring anymore.
For the discussion of speeches and debates, would a good term maybe be that those mostly are able to lionize people who support or are close to supporting people, than anything else?
An interesting discussion. I was interested since Ben Shapiro is one of the darlings of the extreme right and being a moderate am somewhat triggered by that extreme bias. Clearly Shapiro's listing of Presidents is very influenced by his political bias. Having that much bias and narrow point of view makes Shapiro's whole tier of Presidents fall apart.
Polk has always been my favorite president. The slavery thing aside, having clear goals for both foreign policy and financial reform set at the beginning of your term and being able to accomplish them all within that term, then going out while you're on top? Phenomenal. I also really like FDR. While it is unfortunate that the welfare system he created has become bloated and inefficient in more recent years, in its original form it helped to alleviate the financial pain during some of the worst years in the country's history. Plus it really speaks volumes that he managed to win FOUR presidential elections. You don't get that unless you're doing something right.
I agree about Polk he is easily one of the most influential and successful presidents of the United States. What modern politician could claim to have set out their objectives and then met them all in a timely manner? California alone has 40 million people and this is just one area of the country that was incorporated by Polk. Imagine a US with no California. Think how many US citizens today are Americans because of the fact Polk added those areas. Remove that and the nation would be smaller and this would impact the amount of aid they could have contributed in the world wars. It is Understandable many dislike that he initiated the Mexican American war but the massive amount of land acquired through the US winning this war is not Polk’s only achievement. He got Oregon territory from Britain through diplomacy, he made an independent treasury that lasted until the federal reserve replaced it. He also sorted out the tariffs. Basically he was a workaholic and did everything he said he would. And wasn’t he an extremely sick child who only learned to read much later than usual? I’m not American, I’m English, but I don’t understand how Polk isn’t more focused on in the US education, he remains pretty unknown for the scale of impact he had.
I loved Mr. Terry's face when Ben put Calvin Coolidge in the A spot. I made the exact same face. I usually rank presidents on how much they got done, popularity, and their leadership, but I try my best to exclude my personal opinions since, to me, that's not how you rank presidents. For example, I'm a decently liberal person but I would still rank people like Reagan high because he was extremely popular meaning people liked what he did and thought he did the right things, and he was effective in actually doing what he said he would do. He was also a fantastic leader in many ways. Not that I don't include other factors and specific policy things though. But that just seems like more of a comprehensive way to do things to me, but it's also not to say that ranking with your personal political views, like Ben seems to do, is a bad thing. Thought my point about Coolidge is that I don't know a whole lot about him or if he was as notably as effective at passing legislation as LBJ or FDR, or if he was a notably strong leader like the Reagan or Eisenhower types.
I appreciate your objectivity in this approach. One flaw I see with your approach is that popularity does not correspond to effectiveness or how good they were. The obvious example is that Hitler was popular. But you also could take into account long-lasting effects. Another example: I respect that you are a liberal. I'm a conservative. While I think FDR was popular, I think the long-term effects of his presidency have been really bad, so I rank him low (maybe like C tier). Another example to (maybe) favor your viewpoint: Joe Biden is incredibly unpopular. But if his presidency ends with zero carbon emissions from his actions, I would guess you would say he was a good president?
@@coltonmoore4572 I like the points you raised. I think what you said about popularity is very fair. If I were to counter it though I could say Hitler was an extreme case. The people of Germany turned to extremism and he was a very good choice if extremism is what one wants. Hitler was very good at delivering what his supporters wanted, clearly. This of course is not a justification for any of the terrible things he did. But with regards to that, Hitler would get a high ranking for how effectively he delivered on his promises -- except of course with regards to having been (fortunately) defeated. He also most surely would not and SHOULD not have a high ranking in general since, you know, he was Hitler -- very obvious stuff like that goes without saying. This comment was a while ago so my thoughts have almost surely changed in a way. For your point with regards to Biden, I'd say he was good on the matter of carbon emissions if that was the case, but to outright say if he was good or bad I think would depend on how he handled more of the issues and not just carbon emissions. He has yet to deliver on a lot of his promises. So maybe it would depend on how I'd balance if he did what he said he was going to do versus having done generally good things. Also too, there are plenty of times when a president did the right thing and saw massive disapproval -- a huge example being Lincoln. He did the right thing with slavery but in the eyes of many people at the time, if I'm not mistaken, the civil war was a direct cause of him just being elected. Very interesting things to think about that you mentioned and I always love juicy stuff like that LOL
@@coltonmoore4572 FDRs programs have prevented starvation, prevented people from working until the day they died and created most of the infrastructure that the US economy relies on to this day. They also prevented major depressions until Reagan undid everything he thought he could get away with. People cry about the possibility of Biden being senile (and he well could be) but the same people like to forget that Reagan had Alzheimer's before he took office and it just progressively got worse while he was President. He also had very little to do with the fall of the USSR, they were going to fold on their own. He at best hastened them along by a few years.
17:30. It increasingly seems to me that support or opposition for war isn’t an issue of political party, but of class. In recent polling, support for direct US military intervention in Ukraine directly tracks with household income, for example
Then why are we still spending so much on the military? The cold ear used to be the reason. Then the post cold war anti communism argument kept it alive... Now what?
The problem with taking Shapiro seriously is you have to assume he's being honest or objective. Ben is all about growing that brand, I'd presume he made this video with his personal image and growing a brand at the forefront, not an honest breakdown of several US presidents.
Shapiro has the empathy of a wood chipper and only cares about Shapiro. So any president that championed policies that helped the common man get a hand up is evil. He can't even see that FDR's policies saved us from becoming either communist or fascist because people were in such dire circumstances they were ready to burn the whole thing down.
Just starting here, kinda wondering where he’ll put Nixon. Edit - OK. Kinda shocked that Harding didn’t make F tier. I only know about Teapot Dome because I happened to do a project on scandals in high school.
its like you dont understand the difference between words and actions. kind of makes sense, though. What WW did was absolutely horrible, as Ben describes in his video. Raegan used words, oh no how horrible.
@@safersephiroth943 Raegan also had racist policies, which Ben didn’t even mention. I agree that Raegan was a better president than Wilson, but not using the same criteria with both of them shows lack of consistency.
I'm surprised slightly as a history teacher he go that wrong, but also he has said he hasn't taught American history in a very long time. But still, I even knew that, and I didn't know 1/4 of the shit they brought up about each president.
@@djjazzyjeff1232 He didn't get it wrong, he said that some people argue this way and some people argue that way. Terry was careful to not take a position on the matter.
@@-Ricky_Spanish- No, he absolutely got it wrong. He said that Lincoln's policy only freed the slaves in the Union. When what it actually did was only free the slaves in the Confederacy.
With the Coolidge ranking- the thought process is that Coolidge and his policies ultimately had little to do with causing the Great Depression. Obviously Coolidge had little to do with the duration of the depression as well. This argument stems from the belief that the Federal Reserve (the FED) was the cause of the downturn. Milton Friedman wrote extensively about it - it’s controversial and complex. To simplify- Friedman was very particular in regards to phenomena such as inflation. He specialized in the study and understanding of monetary policy. He made the observation that before the depression, the M2 quantity of money had fallen by roughly one third. Essentially a drought in liquidity caused a panic in the economy. It was the FEDs responsibility to ensure liquidity would remain as it had throughout the rest of the 20’s. The FED was a large factor for the great economic “boom” to begin with. The FED had taken on the role of ensuring bank failures wouldn’t happen - within 2 decades it had caused the greatest bank failure ever recorded. This also puts a point against Wilson - a heavy advocate for the Federal Reserve. Most free market guys loathe the FED. Also Hoover had a terrible response to the depression (smoot hawley tariffs) and as did FDR - it’s a hindsight problem. They continually bit themselves - FDR saw unemployment reach the 20s in the face of all of his good intentions. It’s a hated thought, but the depression conditions were created by government oversight- and then worsened and prolonged again by more oversight. None of it was good - the roaring 20’s were primarily artificial - it looks great for the 401ks - but slowly a monster is being built until one day it’s provoked. Today we’re seeing similar trends. That’s another story. FDR was a terrific president for WW2, I guess that’s besides the point.
My biggest issue with his list is that he is using too much hindsight. In all fairness I think all people do, but I also think it is more important to judge people in relation to their time, as well ass discounting any issues that don't affect the country. Also, as far as why he ranked Eisenhower so low, I have to disagree that it was not good to help Hungary, that would've 100% resulted in Nuclear war. Also he seems to forget that Nationalist a China was not a good country, it was just as bad if not worse than the PRC,at least during the Chinese Civil War.
@@djjazzyjeff1232 By judging a president based on the reactions/results of the time? Washington was a terrible president because he was racist. Y'know why thats an unfair statement created by hindsight bias? Because who wasn't?
@@Killerbee4712 Ok? So what's your point? The ONLY way to view history is through hindsight. Because it's the past. It's literally in the definition of the word history lol.
@@djjazzyjeff1232 My point was you CAN remove hindsight bias, which I just did. Hindsight isnt an inherent part of "looking at the past" its the bias we CARRY through hindsight that affects our correct judgement of his history. So people are saying that hindsight BIAS is affecting our judgement of these characters, not that we use hindsight. Speaking of which, are we both on the same wavelength of the word "hindsight"? lets look it up: "understanding of a situation or event only after it has happened or developed". That means characters performing the actions in the moment dont have such "hidnsight", and as a result cannot be judged unfairly for not being able to predict the future. An unfair statement would be "the german people should've not voted for Hitler because he started ww2". That's a historical insight that carries hindsight bias. Can we look at history withOUT hindsight? Yes. "The Germans did not know that Hitler was going to start a world war when they voted for him as early as 1928, and as a result, cannot be entirely faulted for the rise of Hitler's power. By eliminating hindsight, you can achieve context, and through context, you can begin to understand things in more complex manners.
Can't believe he called Woodrow Wilson a "socialist" when in his memoir "Brother Woodrow" he frequently asserts his fondness of the rising fascist state in Italy and frequently condemned the newly founded USSR.
![เปิด อาณาจักร หมื่นล้าน "สาระตั้ม" l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3XE0nPF4YkQ/mqdefault.jpg)
What would you change in Ben's tier list?
Ohm
Everything
Adding a D category
@@nickparisho5266 where would you put george washington?
@@nickparisho5266 soooooo you think Abraham Lincoln is a crappy president?
I do think the lack of a "D" category puts the spin on the selections as being more positive or top heavy and doesn't allow for the distinctions of the more poorly rated
Yeah his producer really did him dirty there.
If he's using the site I think he's using, he should have been able to add, delete, or even re-name his tiers. Probably just didn't care enough to figure out how.
The site allows you to add tiers so the producers should have been able to set it up with the ranks Ben wanted.
@@PsychicWars Shapiro is so ignorant of history I don't know why anyone would bother listening to his drivel much less responding to it. The Declaration of Independence is NOT part of the Constitution, Jefferson was NOT a Federalist, and CRA of 1964 DOES prohibit discrimination in the private sector. This is basic stuff that Shapiro doesn't know.
"S" is more about Japanese video games than anything. I'm pretty sure if Ben went with A, B, C and D it would be fine and he wouldn't need to act like he doesn't understand this world, but he's just gonna roll with it.
Everyone keeps saying the comments are going to become a warzone, but honestly people are pretty chill here.
Most people in Mr. Terry’s comments are chill and just here to learn some history. It’s pretty awesome!
REEEEEE I TRIGGERED IMMA FIND YOU MICAH AHHHHHHH lol
Mr. Terry DESTROYS Ben Shapiro with FACTS and LOGIC
One thing often forgotten about Coolidge is that he was one of the earliest real proponents for civil rights, particularly with Native Americans.
Didn't do much with it tho
and women's suffrage
Being just a proponent is equally as effective as being against it if you do nothing about it
@nodical802 Was it possible to actually change tho? I mean teddy did his stuff as, imo, it's economic, which coolidges issues would have been more cultural.
Eh idk
True. Even the Johnson-Reed Act was less about xenophobia and more about economic protectionism.
The hard part with the "F tier" in this set up, and you as a teacher would know this Mr. Terry, is that F is such a broad range. 0 to 65 is all failing, whereas A, B, C are very clear about the range the person falls in. Like Ben might see LBJ as a 45, FDR as a 30, Obama as a 60, and Wilson as a 0, but they would all be an F.
That’s what I was thinking, he should of used the C tier as the D tier or something
@@JuneWrld209 you can add as many tier as you want
@@namastehindustan9879 pfff!!!! ok then I will!!
60 is D not F
@@VlogColton but there is no D
I would love to see your own version of the presidential tier list. If it’s easier you could break up the presidents into two
groups/videos one covering the first 23 and then the second video the remaining ones.
Or you could even break them up even more and then do videos with only 6 presidents at a time, or whatever number you think is best. That way you don’t few rushed and can get to every point you would like to mention.
"People don't care about speeches"
Very true, they prefer out of context clips.
Don’t forget to attribute that to Abraham Lincoln. He said it, uh… somewhere, probably while he was alive.
@@Justanotherconsumer "please don't take my speech out of context"
- Abraham Lincoln
It’s important to notice that this happens on both sides
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I couldn't understand how he couldn't understand that the hatred people have for Trump is due to his mostly out-of-context *speeches* and false assumptions. No lie, Trump shot himself in the foot sometimes.
@@mbinze1298and he’s a truly awful human who did such damage to so many.
It's a shame that so many presidents place themselves in my personal C tier because although they spent half their time as president doing great things, they spent the other half committing atrocities. A specific example is Andrew Jackson. And we all know why
Trail of tears?
True but he wasn’t all that great from the start in my opinion.
@@sifibruh7055 yeah, after listening to his biography, the only thing he did that truelly impress me was set up precedent for Lincoln to use when Jackson told South Carolina and their secession plan to go to hell.
Don't forget Jefferson.
Andrew Jackson: Pros: Expanded voting rights from landowners to common men, fought the Bank and Won, and is he only President to pay off our National Debt.
Cons: The Trail of Tears, which was terrible, but I think it was inevitable, because Jackson wasn’t the only one who wanted to move the Native American Indians.
I appreciate your commentary , and love hearing reasonable debate.
We've seen Mr. T and VTH react to a conservative's ranking of the US Presidents. I'd like them to do a reaction to a liberal/progressive's ranking now.
Well, VTH's combined ranking of every president together with Mr Beat provided some interesting insight into his criterias for judging a presidency imo
It's the only logical next step!
@@sakyon6621 yh I agreed with most of their picks, and even when I didn't they had genuine and rational reasoning, unlike someone like Ben Shapiro
It's TH-cam. American conservatism will always get more views
I don't know if there's too many well known American TH-camrs who would consider themselves progressives who have done US Presidents rankings.
Just like with conservatives, there's a lot of non-Americans who talk about stuff. There's also just the element of is it really necessary or a useful practice? I know as a Canadian who leans left I'd have a different ranking but I also would have a hard time choosing based off of what's best for the USA since I'm not American and I think that there's major issues with documents considered foundational to the USA.
The fact that he put bush in the c tier and Obama in the f tier should tell you everything you need know about ben Shapiro
Except he said Obama would be D tier if it was an option
@@taylore6582 Obama was so middle of the road and milk toast when comes to presidents. To say a president that lied his way into the start of a 20 year, and left the country in a depression after being handed a budgetary surplus and the largest economic expansion since fdr was better than Obama is just partisan hackery
@@rodricjohnson5950 i mean thats fine to see it that way, I was just correcting you by saying he didn't have Obama as F tier
It tells you what his political biases are, no more, no less
It works both ways. I would have placed Obama and Bush Jr. exactly as he did. Am I a conservative? Absolutely.
Most liberals would place Obama much higher. That’s also a bias. He was a so-so president at best.
The problem with saying Truman should’ve provided more support to Chiang Kai-Shek would be the fact that it doesn’t take into account how corrupt Chiang was. He often kept the funds provided in his own personal treasury. Plus the temporary ceasefire they had during the civil war 1949 in China didn’t help either.
Yeah plus how he ruled his government in exile on taiwan. It was only after he died and a bit later that taiwan started becoming what it is today and not how mainland CCP China is about recapturing all the rightful Chinese land or whatever nowadays.
FDR at the bottom? HAHA. FDR inherited a bankrupt country and delivered a victorious superpower. Nixon also ended the Vietnam War and isolated the USSR. Also, a confrontation with the USSR for the Hungarian Revolution would have probably ended in a nuclear war. I believe he is very biased.
@@leonidaspapanikolaou3165FDR was a terrible president so yes
@@antonioiniguez1615 FDR made America a global superpower in less than 20 years from the economic depression.
@@leonidaspapanikolaou3165 Nope. The fact that WW2 ravaged Europe did that. FDR extended the great depression and we only got out of it because of WW2
I don’t blame Coolidge for the Great Depression.
I feel like a lot of folks just saw the title, made a bunch of assumptions, and commented without watching. They're saying a lot of nonsense in these comments..
Here's my issue on Jimmy Carter: Shapiro literally gave credit to Reagan for Paul Volker, but it was Jimmy Carter who actually appointed him. Reagan gets credit for two big things Jimmy Carter did: the terrorist hostage negotiations & Paul Volker. As a history teacher, this should be pointed out since it's clear in written records we have today
He was too nice and good of a person to be President. Carter wasn’t the type to go blast Reagan even if it’d have been justified.
Same with Ulysses S Grant. Too naive and good of a person. The corruption in his cabinet (that he himself had nothing to do with) was able to happen because time and again he trusted the wrong people. He got swindled more times than I can count, every time by a “business partner “ who left him holding the bag. But even when he was chopping firewood and walking 20 miles into St Louis every day to sell it, his father in law gifted him a slave.
He actually became friendly with him and within a few months gave him his freedom. Which would be like giving a home that had the mortgage paid off away for free. Average monthly income was $17 and he could have sold him for $1000+ easy. This was right before the war and he desperately need the money. But he didn’t.
Idk man after reading Chernows bio on Grant I can see how it’s not always the winners who write history.
Not to mention Reagan negotiated for Iran to keep the hostages until he was elected (which is illegal)
I’ve long thought, and I say this as a staunch conservative, Carter was not successful, but nowhere near as bad as he is portrayed by many.
A decent, sincere man who didn’t have strong leadership skills and was in way over his head during an extremely difficult time in history.
@@patrickc3419 those are fair criticisms. The times were different and Jimmy wasn't put in a position to really succeed nor was he probably the right man for the times. He was handed the inflation crisis. However he had several missteps too.
At the end of the day, I don't know any president when viewed honestly I can't say both positive and negative things about. Some have way more negatives and much more questionable motives than Jimmy to your point 👍
The terrorist negotiation revisionist history is a Democrat myth/conspiracy theory
Long before this, I had an exact fever dream of you and Vlogging Through History eventually reacting to Ben Shapiro.
Picture them reacting to the Napoleonic war or Cold War.
I'd love a collab between the two of them.
Terry, he's not a libertarian, he's a conservative. Maybe old school to the extent he might have some libertarian tendencies, but he's definitely a conservative.
He's a libertarian government wise and a conservative socially
@@emmanuellawyer8562 banning abortion is not very libertarian
@@milanortiz5665 abortion is a social controversy it has nothing to do with how the government should be ran
@@emmanuellawyer8562 banning abortion is letting the government punish people for having an abortion.
It's not libertarian, that's the opposite, it's authoritarian.
@@milanortiz5665 no because because if abortion was made illegal it would be punished like any other crime like when alcohol was illegal
George Washington struggled with the idea of slavery later in life and wrote a letter to a friend saying he hoped America would gradually end slavery. Specific issues he was concerned with for his own slaves were, he did not have the finances necessary to free them under Virginia law. There were also the Dower slaves that had married and had children with his slaves who he had no authority to free, and freeing his own slaves would result in families being separated. I think he was also concerned about his reputation. Being a war hero was something he was proud of and he would not want that reputation damaged. He solved the money problem and the pride problem by putting the freedom of his slaves into his will. Abraham Lincoln was strongly opposed to slavery and spoke out against it many times, but he also understood that at the time neither Congress, nor the President had the authority to free the slaves, that authority belonged to the States. It took an Amendment to the Constitution to officially end slavery legally, which can only be done if a significant amount of Americans already believed slavery should end. Both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln believed slavery would end on its own. Even without the war it probably would have ended eventually.
Wishful thinking at best free almost limitless workforce is not something that would just go away they had a war about its human nature to get over on someone if you can they never felt morally wrong for owning slaves or they would have never done it
sources?
@@malikwatson857 i feel like you're missing the political context. The North wanted to end slavery, the South did not, the North had almost 3 times as many people as the South did. Abraham Lincoln and the other Republicans, had the war not happened, would have admitted more free states, rather than slave states, and eventually the political power would have been thrown out of balance and the North would have been able to abolish slavery. This would have taken decades longer though, so I'm thankful that history forced Lincoln's hand.
washington moved his slaves over state lines in order to reset the clock on having to free them. Sure he may have been conflicted but he didn’t not free them because he didn’t have the finances to do so.
He did have nice sentiments, but you're mistaken about the slaves. Washington did not free his slaves. They continued to serve Martha even after he passed.
33:24 He said he thought Roosevelt’s leadership in ww2 was good, but he did say he didn’t like the intervention into ww1
I mean Ben Shapiro is into politics and rarely do people in politics ever take a neutral stance on things.
Him being Jewish introduces an incredible bias when it comes to American politics. It's more than a little ironic that he still chooses to side with the party that coddles neo-nazis.
@@-Ricky_Spanish- You say it as if Conservatives welcome the Neo-Nazis.
@@-Ricky_Spanish- You mean the KKK and Southern DEMOCRATS ? Or are you still mad about when the Republicans took your slaves away.
Me: *eagerly waiting you to try and say the parties "switched" so I can shoot ya down on that one real quick*
@@SammyAlt They don't do a whole lot to discourage them. The GOP is the party of hate groups because their policies often align more than not.
I'm sure many others said the same, but I'd love to see you do a tier list of Presidents. With everybody's tier list, ranking or other comparatives they have criteria and perspectives they use, and I think you would do a good job of establishing that up front, which is a huge help. He had a few points he was consistent on - highly ranking small government and not gathering power to the executive branch, and lowly ranking social programs...but he also was big on fighting Communism in China and Korea but against it in Vietnam.
I have honestly avoided Shapiro because he's always been up front about being hyper-partisan and I'm firmly anti-partisan (go ahead, have fun with that term). I don't think anyone is truly aligned with a party, but he's sort of in a weird "talking head" space where he knows his words have an impact and he's trying to shape that to spread certain ideals, not to spread actual information. That's part of why he wasn't consistent, I think. We all generally feel our involvement in Vietnam was bad for one reason or another so he had to acknowledge that was bad, while getting involved in China is a hypothetical and people are more neutral about our involvement in Korea so he has more room to spin those.
I was briefly tempted to make my own list. The main reason I'm not going to bother, though, is Washington. I would also start with him and I could not tell you where I'd put him. Part of me wants to put everyone who owned slaves in F tier, part of me wants to consider historical context, and those aren't things I can really reconcile. I was taught with more of a "consider context" perspective that gave a free pass to anyone before Congress did something about an issue, but I can't honestly say that makes sense in retrospect. We love Lincoln in spite of his racist views, violations of the constitution, and violations of what we now consider human rights because his EFFECT was hugely positive in ending slavery. Washington was the reverse though, having the effect of creating a hugely damaging history of slavery by his sponsorship of the constitution that set it in stone that lead directly to its ratification through his personal popularity. But he set good precedents for the Presidential office and was somewhat good about following the constitution...at least relative to 45 of his successors. Much like Shapiro, as a people we're inconsistent about what we like about our past Presidents based largely on emotion. We care that Washington helped us have a country at all by throwing his weight behind the plan, and that Lincoln ended slavery, and everything else is just details we learn about after we form an opinion about them. And even as I complain about it here, I can't extricate how I feel about them well enough to give an opinion on them that isn't just reacting to how I feel.
Yes please! Do your own version of this!
Sir this is a Wendy’s.
@@coldplaysgames6695 No, it's an Arby's, and stop camping on our lawn.
I liked the number of times Mr. Terry paused Shapiro and Shapiro looked liked he was glaring at Mr. Terry.
I wish there were more presidents in this list but I get it, to do EVERY president especially like ones between Washington and Lincoln, the video was already super long, I understand why he didn’t do them all, but it’d have been nice to see more.
He could have easily gotten all 45 in. And he could have graded them in any fashion he wanted to . and honestly im pretty sure thats exactly what he did. It allowed him to put more presidents in the F group and then excuse by saying he might have put them in the D but since it was mysteriously missing and being the self proclaimed genius he is could not find a way to have whatever kind of grading system he wanted and with a very narrow set of criteria based on hisown selected aspects, attributes, accomplishments, and failures, etc. Yet he purposefully picked the presidents he picked ( I suspect on his biased peraonal opinion favor or dislike. ) we know now which are his favorite presidents. And who he dislikes the most . and those who didnt do or institute. Anything too great or terrible for Ben to consider as important or relevant .
And if we are being honest with ourselves we would all do the same. ( unless one is an presidential historian ).
@@wanderer85295 He could've gotten all 45 in? That would be an INSANE amount of research, plus the video would've been like 4 hours long lmfao.
@@djjazzyjeff1232 well yes there would've been hours years decades of research . But he could've just given an overview showing which presidents he put in each grade and then given a brief reason for any that his grade is oppositional to conventional opinion
I mean do you really want to hear Ben Shapiro’s hot take on Millard Fillmore?
@@quarkonium3795 no not really actually don't want to have to listen to anything Benny boy has to say about anything.
Wilson was vociferous in support of parliamentarian democracy, he did so in his doctoral dissertation. In his doctoral dissertation in Political Science (he was granted one of the first degrees in that field, in America) he held the American way of governing and the Confederacy in contempt, and liked how the Prime Minister in a parliamentary system basically has more power constitutionally than a President in a presidential system.
Which is a tremendous strike against Wilson.
@@mjbull5156 we SHOULD run congress more like a Parliament. It would do a lot to eliminate our two party system, but we should also keep the President as is with no change to a Prime Minister.
I already don't like him, you don't have to sell me on it
He actually said he supported FDR's handling of WWII. That was one of the positives for him. So, it doesn't seem that conflicts with his statement about being more supportive of one side over the other in China's conflict.
And the fact that the only two things people know him for are his handling of WW2 and the New Deal but he still gets the lowest rating possible?
@@scottlemiere2024 I think the New Deal was terrible and would rank him low for that reason. There are studies that show he may have actually extended the Great Depression by years with those policies. I understand he was trying to do something to help, but I don't think we should be grading on intentions.
@@frostbyte12The New Deal was not terrible. Such a laughable claim.
@@za-ir5ni Studies show that his New Deal policies may have extended the Great Depression by as long as 8 years. Also, it greatly increased the size and cost of the federal government. The fact that you think the claim is laughable without, seemingly, being aware of the data that exists is what is laughable. Next time, just proclaim your ignorance of the data rather than trying to make a subjective dismissal. I don't care about your feelings, only the stats/data/facts.
@frostbyte12 The fact that you see "as long as 8 years" and don't see the inherent flaw that makes those studies bunk is very telling. That means you think the Great Depression would have ended right away without FDR lol. Lack of critical thinking on your part. Also forgetting that if you credit WW2 for getting us out of it, you have to give FDR that credit too for his leadership and handling of the war machine. All the social welfare were good as well. Conservatives are not serious people.
I'm sorry I can't hear Ben Shapiro without laughing due to all the memes I heard with his robot voice impersonator
Shapiro finds those hilarious
@@matityaloran9157 hopefully...
@@LiberatedCastaway1 He does. He’s seen several of them and actually at one point made a video reaction to Ben Shapiro parody videos. He almost always finds them hilarious
He kinda sounds like a voice Seth McFarlane would put on
A lot of those weren't impersonations. Ben really does want a breedable femboy.
I'm glad you called him on Vietnam. At the time of the fall of Dien Bien Phu, the US was paying 90% of the military costs and Nixon, as the VP in 54 was pushing for more involvement see "Tin and Tungsten" speech.
remember trumps historic speech where on the 4th of july, ranted on about how we took the brittish air bases? Such an icon
ls that the same one at Mt Rushmore where he said the nation was under attack from FAR LEFT FASCISM???
Yeah and all those great policies that Ben pointed out for trump in the video like he did for every other person. like what were some of the things Ben pointed out that he thought trump did that helped or hurt the country economically or some other way I remember Ben said trump had a speech had another speech and he never pointed out a thing trump did for the country or even tried to accomplish dam that’s a good president right there that not even Ben had something he accomplished that Ben thought helped anyone out true b tier right there.
Tier lists may be easy content as an opinion piece, but I fear they're too simplistic for more complex topics, even if it may have been not meant to be really serious and was just following a trend I'm unaware of. He focused his opinions on topics that are important to him and gave respective examples, which is to be expected, but it's not very satisfactory as the explanations seem kind of one sided and ignorant of for example social climates at the time. Especially the amplification of the war on drugs and the overall more negative consequences would put someone like Reagan automatically in a lower tier in my opinion.
As someone not from the US I can't stand the American dominated online political sphere due to its utter lack of nuance and ridiculous sports team behavior and I'm not sure if videos like this help people understand each other more, or accidentally gave people "arguments" to throw around. Your commentary and context input was definitely making it worth a watch, though I put it on 1.5 speed.
Agreed, but Ben never really hides the fact that he leans heavily right. Which also explains his lower rating of FDR and higher rating of Reagan
@@tamberlame27 for a one to one comparison I belive what FDR did made him worse than Ragan. There was the court stacking, welfare, social security, income tax, and the beginning of the war industrial complex. All of this caused our debt to skyrocket to an insane degree and prolonged the depression for years until the war happend. Regan had the war on drugs which wasn't bad but still inflated that debt along with increased military spending which caused the collapse of the soviet union.
@@MK-ok6yp You also forgot about Reagan cutting welfare programs and organizing rallies on spots where Afro-Americans and pro-black suffrage activists were lynched.
Also how he made up stories about African-American woman with 11 names abusing welfare programs and saying how that totally happend.
Also the great switch where parties switched places and Republican party became party of mostly white conservatives.
He basically made life fir the lower classes a lot harder while talking about trickle down economics that were proven to be bullshit.
He should be F for Fucking up so much.
@@MK-ok6yp The war on drugs was and still is very bad.
@@MK-ok6yp The social security and welfare are really good for the people
Interesting how he really only brought up racism for the “liberal” presidents, and completely ignored any racist statements or policies for many of the conservative presidents.
Liberals are the most racist people on earth 🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️ just because you don’t like someone doesn’t make them a racist 🤷🏻♂️
Can you give some examples?
Note that he gleefully gave Obama an F for "adding 4 trilion to the debt". Never mind GWB added nearly 12 trillion and Trump added over 6 trillion in just four years.
@@-Ricky_Spanish- He didn't say "To the debt" he said "to the budget." Which is a very different thing.
@@djjazzyjeff1232 How is that very different? Budget is spending compared to your income, and the difference is either surplus or debt. Both Trump and GWB added significantly more debt to America than Obama, because their budgets increased spending without increasing income.
The GOP loves to talk about fiscal responsibility, but talking is all they do. In reality, they spend wildly and leave it for the next guy to figure out.
Mr. Terry, I highly appreciate your fair, unbiased analysis of Ben’s video. In today’s polarized political sphere, presenting him in a fair light is incredibly refreshing. Thank you sir, respect
Agreed
I guess it is good that he does. I wouldn't Shapiro is crap just like his list.
He legitimately didn't list a single policy for Trump and put him in the B teir.
Shapiro is Jewish so I assume moving the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem and the Abraham Accords would both feature prominently in his list of accomplishments.
@@chriswhinery925he still should have said it.
I assume he agreed with the immigration policys and the social policys mainly
Because Trump isnt about policies. Policy has nothing to do with why someone would like Trump as president. It is all about bigotry.
@@LikeGod_ButBetterLookingTrump is not a bigot you moron. You tell me how Biden’s policies are better than Trump’s?
(Alleged) Fun fact, Andrew Jackson once sent Buchanan to Europe because Jackson absolutely despised him, he’s even (allegedly) quoted as saying “I want him as far away from this country as possible”
With Jefferson A. The Embargo Act wrecked the US economy, and B. Jefferson was not a Federalist, he massively increased the size and power of the executive branch, in fact other conservatives hate Jefferson for not consulting congress about the Louisiana purchase as it broke with the legal precedent that the presidents powers were limited to those explicitly dictated by the constitution.
Jefferson was the main anti-federalist, he was theirain opponent
Jefferson was the example president in my class of how tariffs are more complicated economically than you'd think they'd be. We also learned about what the general climate of campaigning was during that period.
Edit: the loyalty thing was mostly Jackson apperantly. Old AJ was at it again.
Jefferson got a taste of executive power and became an authoritarian.
This is the first video I saw and I already like you because you at least acknowledge the other perspectives on Abraham Lincoln. Most people won't even entertain the idea because it counters the information they have been spoon fed.
Shapiro: Conservatives have a soft spot for Nixon because he’s not George McGovern.
Terry: That’s not saying much.
🤣
I don't believe you or Terry know much about George McGovern.
@@NoExitLoveNow Believe whatever you want, it doesn't make you right.
@@NoExitLoveNow I'd choose a historian over a high school debater all day long..
@@NoExitLoveNow You’re an expert on the subject?
I really like your analysis of Ben's takes. I think Ben has good points, but like you say, he lacks the historical context. Eisenhower did not know how the things would turn out by not acting. And we will never know what would be different if he did it differently.
You can't use the excuse of Eisenhower not making the correct choices as a reason why he shouldn't be criticized. One criteria you judge a leader by is whether he has the foresight to make the correct choices.
I think that's fine though because he did it consistently. For all presidents, he ignored the historical context and just judged them based on the actual results of their actions. If he was ignoring the context with some and taking it into account with others it would be a sign that he's purposely injecting bias into the list but since he did the same thing with everyone I think it's a fair way to judge presidents. Not the only way, taking historical context into consideration would be another way to do it, but there are more than one valid ways to make a list like this.
you should judge leaders on their lack or foresight. short term gains are irrelevant if they're lost later down the road.
Can we just appreciate that both far left and far right people often think Wilson is the worst for vastly different reasons?
Part of the problem with that statement is that most of the modern American political “left” would be considered “far left”, they’ve moved radically left over the last 10 years.
While the “far right” is maybe 5,000 people, most of whom are online trolls.
@@TheArbiterOfTruth I don't know where you got that from! America's Overton window (the politics viewed as acceptable within the mainstream) has really only been shifting to the right since Reagan's presidency. While there have been efforts to make leftist ideology more mainstream (some of which has especially picked up steam in younger folks) America remains with a relatively center-leaning leftist voting base. (Also, there are more than 5,000 people in the "far right" or "alt right" today, just look at Unite The Right 2017, an estimated 500-1500 people showed up to a SINGLE far right protest. I doubt that was over 20% of all of them in the US.)
@@TheArbiterOfTruth equally so, I can say without numbers but from life experience, that I know just as many far right loons as I do left. Not that many. Most people can agree and meet relatively middle when all the information is accurate and available. The media is good at spotlighting the fringes and labeling the whole group. And dividing everyone.
@@TheArbiterOfTruth except what is considered far left is actually center-- it is that the right just became more authoritarian, fascist, and theocratic
@@belikewater420 that’s also a good point. I’m relatively centrist. I guess I could be best described as a “right leaning centrist”, but almost no one on the left will have a conversation with me 😂
Coolidge’s policies did not cause the Great Depression. That’s actually a misnomer. There were a lot of economic factors at play that really were inevitable to result in a recession. It was outside of Coolidge’s control at that point. Also, Hoover is the one one who truly botched the issue and turned a recession into a depression.
Prohibition also contributed as the taxation of alcohol made up a decent percentage of federal tax revenue, and that severely hurt the government's budget.
@@catalyst1641 Yeah there was a lot. Prohibition, the end of World War One reducing the demand for food(which thus reduced foods value), people being unfamiliar with how credit works, etc. There are a lot of reasons. And Hoover’s Smoot-Hawley tariff act turned a Great Recession into a Great Depression.
The Smoot Hawley tariff played a bigger role than the stock market crash in leading to the great depression. And guess who signed the tariff into law. Herbert Hoover.
@@EdwardEren Exactly!
Honestly I don't put much stock into tier lists. It's always based on what, opinions. Now with something like presidents it's even harder because, as you talked about, it's hard to put in perspective the time period as well as the conditions each president had to handle. But even more than that, each president did good and bad things for the country. However for those people living during those administrations, what was good for one person could be bad for another and vise versa. So it's all a matter of opinion and what holds more weight to an individual. All I know is where am I right at this moment. Everything is the way it is because a culmination of every one of those presidents. The good the bad and the ugly has all lead is to where we are now and for me personally I am happy in my life.
No, its actually extremely easy.
"If you are a president when slavery was legal, and you did not end slavery, you automatically get an F, no matter what else you did, no matter how good, you and your administration decided it was fine to have people as property. If you are a president before the civil rights act was signed, you automatically get your final grade lowered to a D. If you declared a war on a country that did not attack us, you get a D- at the highest."
We have not had a single president we should be proud of, only single measures or small economic packages that individually get a B or an A, but overall, that president is still a failure until we have real reform in this country.
As a Libertarian I partially agree with Ben's stances. I do want to say my favorite President WAS Calvin Coolidge and I don't agree that it's his fault for the crash of 1929 or the Depression. As the Scholar Robert Kirby said "President Coolidge had no jurisdiction over the stock exchanges in the cities throughout America-the two largest of which, in New York City, were chartered in New York and subject to the laws of the State of New York. Coolidge had no approval authority over the Federal Reserve System. Its authority was derived from statutes enacted by the U.S. Congress and the System was subject only to Congressional oversight."
I remember reading how WW1 destabilized the currencies and exchange rates across the world and it was hard to keep gold in the U.S. If anything, I would blame the Federal Reserve from 1929-1933 over Coolidge.
I've seen a lot of Ben's stuff and it seems that as far as ben's stance on interventionism goes its financial is ok sending Americans to die is not, so wwi bad because we were not adequately attacked to warrant militaristic involvement but wwii is fine because of pearl harbor. So what he meant in the chiang kai shek statment was fund him to not send Americans to die in china.
But we should also prop up Israel because Palestine is full of brown people seriously that's what he believes
I guarantee is Israel decided to invade Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan, to "regain" the territory of the 12 tribes Shapiro would turn jingoist in a heartbeat and be demanding America launch a "special military operation" to aid the poor oppressed Israelis who "just want what was rightfully given to them by Gawd."
Yikes buddy. Iv listened to his podcast everyday for years and you only skimmed the surface of these topics. I can only assume your being dishonest seeing as how you wrote the most cherrypicked paragraph iv ever seen about someone else's opinion.
@@7Beanss wow he has a podcast how do you even know what's going on
@@anarchomando7707 your sarcasm would be more annoying if you didn't just watch a capitalism vs socialism vs communism video 🤣🤣🤣
People do care about speeches, it gives them ammunition to prove their points of argument. Abraham Lincoln was hated by many people, the Presidential Museum in Springfield, IL has a lot of evidence to this effect. But one of the best points for Speeches is the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address. These speeches were very important and still are as they are used even today to make valid points.
As a Conservative, it's great hearing you being able to disagree with him without having to call him names, this is why you're amazing, Mr Terry.
Although I think he did pretty well with the ranking of Presidents, I don't really have any say in it because I'm not American...
As a Canadian conservative, it’s refreshing to be able to debate and interest with apolitical/moderate/liberal supporters and not be called a Nazi or a misogynist racist.
This is the content I’ve needed
I don’t think anyone should be 100% for or against war. The context in why the intervention is or isn’t needed should matter more.
Did they attack us directly on our own soil? If yes, For. If no, Against.
Agreed
I actually like Coolidge quite a bit. I probably would rank him highly.
I have seen that UCLA paper, and it presents an intriguing case. However, it is an academic paper focused on only the economic potential of the US at the time. It is not a broader study. I would argue that social pressure was just as important at the time. The corporate world had been given to rampant speculation. So people had a hard time, especially people who didn't participate, trusting corporations. It is unlikely that people would have been so trusting of those groups. Which means that taking advantage of the potential economic resources would have been limited. So, I don't agree that FDR extended it. However, I think you can make a case for mismanagement. But, again I think the social pressures, where he fully stepped in, were more important at the time.
The problem with hindsight analysis like that is that it often assumes that people will behave rationally.
Without FDR, we very well may have ended up with the Silver Legion as a major political force.
@@Justanotherconsumer Or Huey Long if he wasn’t assassinated.
Which, I wouldn’t mind Long in charge.
Every Man A King!
I believe the distinction he makes our involvement with the first World War and the Chinese Civil war is he wanted to more heavily fund Change Kai Shek rather than send our own soldiers to fight like we did in the first World War.
I liked your comment about FDR around 15:00 because oftentimes when you are a leader you are forced to choose from bad or worse choices - either way you are blamed for the outcome. Criticism may be warranted, but I like that you are providing additional perspectives and including that narrow snapshot in time that these leaders were dealing with.
I agree that it is difficult to judge the recent things. I have found my perspectives and opinions change the farther away I get from that time period and looking back at the situation.
33:12 Before you say it, I'm thinking.... wait. I thought we didn't like hegemony? Now he says we should've interfered with an uprising across the globe? Yeah ... not sure where the fine line here is.
Great video - this helps pull all that history together a little better for me. THANKS!
FDR at the bottom? HAHA. FDR inherited a bankrupt country and delivered a victorious superpower. Nixon also ended the Vietnam War and isolated the USSR. Also, a confrontation with the USSR for the Hungarian Revolution would have probably ended in a nuclear war. I believe he is very biased.
@@leonidaspapanikolaou3165 I agree with you
@@JesusFinale Cheers mate.
So am I the only one who wishes he was my history teacher? I had a great teacher, but he was very narrow-minded, and unwilling to accept hypothetical or “what if?” conversations. Mr. Terry gives all sides and clarifies if there are any mistakes, and I appreciate that
What if can be logically fallacy
The vast majority of older history teachers know very little about history and basically just teach from the book. Many of them are vets who came back from Vietnam and went into teaching with a general teaching certificate and no specialty and got thrown into teaching history or math. It doesn't help that our education system doesn't really value history or any of the soft sciences like it should. When I graduated high school, we got taught snippets from US history, skipping over anything and everything that made the US look bad in any way EXCEPT slavery. That was blamed on the English that colonized the land and it was taught that we were the first to free our slaves.
44:51, Michael Knowles rated Jackson quite highly when he made his presidential tier list
The Vietnam War "Never" ended (if you're going back to Eisenhower, then you need to go back even Further to the end of WW2, where Truman reneged on the Deal made with Ho Chi Minh to get their help against the Imperial Japanese Army.)
But the decision to commit to sending Americans (as advisors, or soldiers) would be the start, in my opinion. The absence of action wouldn't.
@@lperea21the amount of money IKE spent, almost guaranteed our involvement, and he also advised JFK to continue our involvement.
I taught economics for years; I disagree with many of his rankings. On a positive note, I did enjoy his presentation and your review.
20:23-21:00 I completely agree and have always thought that was true what you said; how hard it is to rank the recent presidents: Biden, Trump (especially), Obama, and to a lesser extent, Bush II. They’re so new that it seems that it’s impossible to have a civil conversation or debate regarding them.
My personal favorites, in no specific order, would have to be: T. Roosevelt, Lincoln, Coolidge, Cleveland, Eisenhower, & Grant.
Just a note while I'm watching the video: Saying that the "Non existent regulation lead to the great depression" is a very controversial statement. There is an entire school of economics (the Austrian school) that completely denies this correlation. I suggest reading the book "America's Great Depression" from "Murray N. Rothbard" which explains this position in length.
When evaluating Shapiro, which is someone who follows the Austrian school, this is a very important thing.
Yeah yeah a D category would help. but also… the 3, 2, 1 was hilarious
16:37 You corrected Mr. Shapiro by saying, "They were already a dictatorial power", but that wasn't at issue in what he said.
His point was that Nixon opening trade with China allowed that regime to gain power internationally (without calling for reforms - all carrot, no stick), not that the Chinese government somehow became dictatorial through Nixon's policies.
At least Nixon's actions prevented Soviet Union and China getting closer with each other.
that little behind the scenes in a Mr Terry video was awesome
Mr Terry: No one cares about speeches.
Abe Lincoln: Am I a joke to you?!
The idea that people don't care about speeches is reflective of Mr. Terry's own recency bias. Speeches absolutely changed the world throughout history, motivating entire nations, and sometimes international support for various causes. It's only in our current tidal wave of information that individual speeches have lost value. I can certainly see Mr. Terry's point if he's weighing ALL political speeches versus important political speeches, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Journalist: Can I make a speech now?
Lincoln: NO! GO BACK TO JAIL NOW!
C-tier at best.
Ulysses S Grant is an underrated President. He’s now seen as a President who fought for equal rights for freed slaves and for passing the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution
7:00 the Emancipation Proclamation did not free slaves in the Union, it was the opposite, only in states that were in open rebellion. Northern slaves were only freed under Grant I believe.
Incorrect. Under the terrible Johnson, December of 1865 if memory serves.
@@joshdavis3743 That was because the 13th Amendment went into effect while Johnson was in office.
@@mjbull5156 Thank you for repeating exactly what I said. Like I said under Johnson, not Grant.
Yeah, pretty big oversight.
43:47, Shapiro was a big supporter of it during the Bush Administration but since then recanted his support for several of the Bush Administration’s policies in that regard and became more of a libertarian
Wait a minute....Ben Shapiro didn't take context into account? Impossible lol
7:55, you’re correct in that assessment
I am 99% percent sure this was inspired by VTH’s video
MR. TERRY!!! It's been too long. I'm so happy to have found your channel again
Good list and thoughts. Can you make your own?
I think the problem that Ben was faced with was time constraints. Ben seems to be very particular about his opinions, but due to the way TH-cam is he had to pack it all into a tightly nit 20 minute video, and therefore had to either summarize, generalize, or completely gloss over certain important details or his opinions on certain topics.
The criticism of the Emancipation Proclamation isnt that it “only freed slaves in Union states” but that it didn’t free any slaves at all at the time, because it specifically granted exceptions for those Union slave areas. It was debatably an effective declaration to make the Union’s cause expressly about slavery though, IMO
It guaranteed that Great Britain wouldn’t join the war on the side of the South.
But wouldn't that also mean that when the southern states returned to the union that they would then lose their slaves? I think that was the point.
I think it's interesting how you made a 48 minute reaction to a 17 minute video, definitely in depth and thorough
I'm a conservative but I always when ranking my presidents put in context of what was going on at the time that influenced president's decisions like I would have put teddy as an a because I believe he responded to the terrible conditions of the 2nd industrial revolution well while I'll but hoover as d because his lack of action made the great depression worst than what it could've been
Hoover did a lot of government spending, which made the depression worse, and then FDR did even more government spending than Hoover, which made the depression last a decade.
@@88michaelandersen true what I think got hoover out was his stance on prohibition he wanted it to still while FDR was for overturning I personally don't think hoover was that bad of a president tho
@@88michaelandersen
Government spending usually reduces recessions. Why would you think that Hoover's spending would have the opposite effect?
@@88michaelandersen I should ask, how quickly did the rest of the world recover from the Great Depression?
@@avishevin1976 Government spending doesn't reduce recessions. Recessions are the result of a mismatch between the goods that are being supplied to an economy and the goods that are demanded in an economy. Government spending makes the mismatch worse in the long run.
@edge Ldine The world didn't really pull out of the Great Depression until the 1950s. FDR's spending made what probably would have been a 2 year market correction into a ten year recession, and by that time World War 2 was going on and continuing to drag down standards of living around the world. A full recovery from both the Depression and the War took until at least 1950 during the Wirtschaftswunder in Austria and Germany.
Did Coolidge run the fed reserve or something? Also, the Great Depression didn't really start until after the Smoot/Hawley tariff, which was passed under Hoover.
I think it’s hilarious that Ben Shapiro is one of those conservatives who rages against Big Tech and accepts sponsorships from Ring who just got caught giving away recordings without warrants I believe.
He isn’t one that’s against “big tech” as much as he is against things that are privacy infringing. This video was also recorded like 3 years ago, before those things came out, I don’t believe he is with ring anymore.
Oh no, please.. not that guy. Not the wire.. 😵💫
For the discussion of speeches and debates, would a good term maybe be that those mostly are able to lionize people who support or are close to supporting people, than anything else?
An interesting discussion. I was interested since Ben Shapiro is one of the darlings of the extreme right and being a moderate am somewhat triggered by that extreme bias. Clearly Shapiro's listing of Presidents is very influenced by his political bias. Having that much bias and narrow point of view makes Shapiro's whole tier of Presidents fall apart.
Welp, the comments section is gonna be great
One can add how many categories he wants on the site, so either he did not know or ignored that he could have to make more of an incisive point.
Polk has always been my favorite president. The slavery thing aside, having clear goals for both foreign policy and financial reform set at the beginning of your term and being able to accomplish them all within that term, then going out while you're on top? Phenomenal.
I also really like FDR. While it is unfortunate that the welfare system he created has become bloated and inefficient in more recent years, in its original form it helped to alleviate the financial pain during some of the worst years in the country's history. Plus it really speaks volumes that he managed to win FOUR presidential elections. You don't get that unless you're doing something right.
I agree about Polk he is easily one of the most influential and successful presidents of the United States.
What modern politician could claim to have set out their objectives and then met them all in a timely manner?
California alone has 40 million people and this is just one area of the country that was incorporated by Polk. Imagine a US with no California.
Think how many US citizens today are Americans because of the fact Polk added those areas. Remove that and the nation would be smaller and this would impact the amount of aid they could have contributed in the world wars.
It is Understandable many dislike that he initiated the Mexican American war but the massive amount of land acquired through the US winning this war is not Polk’s only achievement.
He got Oregon territory from Britain through diplomacy, he made an independent treasury that lasted until the federal reserve replaced it. He also sorted out the tariffs.
Basically he was a workaholic and did everything he said he would.
And wasn’t he an extremely sick child who only learned to read much later than usual?
I’m not American, I’m English, but I don’t understand how Polk isn’t more focused on in the US education, he remains pretty unknown for the scale of impact he had.
He also was the first president to round up Americans into concentration camps based on their ethnicity 👍
That TMNT arcade cabinet is DOPE!!
I loved Mr. Terry's face when Ben put Calvin Coolidge in the A spot. I made the exact same face. I usually rank presidents on how much they got done, popularity, and their leadership, but I try my best to exclude my personal opinions since, to me, that's not how you rank presidents. For example, I'm a decently liberal person but I would still rank people like Reagan high because he was extremely popular meaning people liked what he did and thought he did the right things, and he was effective in actually doing what he said he would do. He was also a fantastic leader in many ways. Not that I don't include other factors and specific policy things though. But that just seems like more of a comprehensive way to do things to me, but it's also not to say that ranking with your personal political views, like Ben seems to do, is a bad thing. Thought my point about Coolidge is that I don't know a whole lot about him or if he was as notably as effective at passing legislation as LBJ or FDR, or if he was a notably strong leader like the Reagan or Eisenhower types.
I appreciate your objectivity in this approach. One flaw I see with your approach is that popularity does not correspond to effectiveness or how good they were. The obvious example is that Hitler was popular. But you also could take into account long-lasting effects.
Another example: I respect that you are a liberal. I'm a conservative. While I think FDR was popular, I think the long-term effects of his presidency have been really bad, so I rank him low (maybe like C tier).
Another example to (maybe) favor your viewpoint: Joe Biden is incredibly unpopular. But if his presidency ends with zero carbon emissions from his actions, I would guess you would say he was a good president?
@@coltonmoore4572 I like the points you raised. I think what you said about popularity is very fair. If I were to counter it though I could say Hitler was an extreme case. The people of Germany turned to extremism and he was a very good choice if extremism is what one wants. Hitler was very good at delivering what his supporters wanted, clearly. This of course is not a justification for any of the terrible things he did. But with regards to that, Hitler would get a high ranking for how effectively he delivered on his promises -- except of course with regards to having been (fortunately) defeated. He also most surely would not and SHOULD not have a high ranking in general since, you know, he was Hitler -- very obvious stuff like that goes without saying. This comment was a while ago so my thoughts have almost surely changed in a way. For your point with regards to Biden, I'd say he was good on the matter of carbon emissions if that was the case, but to outright say if he was good or bad I think would depend on how he handled more of the issues and not just carbon emissions. He has yet to deliver on a lot of his promises. So maybe it would depend on how I'd balance if he did what he said he was going to do versus having done generally good things. Also too, there are plenty of times when a president did the right thing and saw massive disapproval -- a huge example being Lincoln. He did the right thing with slavery but in the eyes of many people at the time, if I'm not mistaken, the civil war was a direct cause of him just being elected. Very interesting things to think about that you mentioned and I always love juicy stuff like that LOL
@@coltonmoore4572 FDRs programs have prevented starvation, prevented people from working until the day they died and created most of the infrastructure that the US economy relies on to this day. They also prevented major depressions until Reagan undid everything he thought he could get away with.
People cry about the possibility of Biden being senile (and he well could be) but the same people like to forget that Reagan had Alzheimer's before he took office and it just progressively got worse while he was President. He also had very little to do with the fall of the USSR, they were going to fold on their own. He at best hastened them along by a few years.
8:36, Shapiro is definitely being a bit hyperbolic with that phrase though Wilson did use the phrase “war socialism”.
17:30. It increasingly seems to me that support or opposition for war isn’t an issue of political party, but of class. In recent polling, support for direct US military intervention in Ukraine directly tracks with household income, for example
I think most average Americans don’t want to be dragged into another war.
@@crusader2112 Exactly. But those that do are those who would be least affected
@@senorsiro3748 Exactly, it’s always the upper classes who push for conflict, behind the scenes.
Then why are we still spending so much on the military? The cold ear used to be the reason. Then the post cold war anti communism argument kept it alive... Now what?
Thanks for your balanced and informative analysis!
For me, Lincoln is A tier. Good during the Civil War and for slavery but had questionable decisions when it came to journalists and free speech
Lincoln is constitutionally allowed to suspend habeas corpus.
@@maxwell8758 dosent mean it is moral
@@illitaret8780 Yes it does
@@maxwell8758 moral and legal arent the same...
@@noahnewman8264 In this case they are
6:45 - Terry said that the Emancipation Proclamation was only supposed to affect Union states. It was the opposite, though...
The problem with taking Shapiro seriously is you have to assume he's being honest or objective. Ben is all about growing that brand, I'd presume he made this video with his personal image and growing a brand at the forefront, not an honest breakdown of several US presidents.
Shapiro has the empathy of a wood chipper and only cares about Shapiro. So any president that championed policies that helped the common man get a hand up is evil. He can't even see that FDR's policies saved us from becoming either communist or fascist because people were in such dire circumstances they were ready to burn the whole thing down.
If that was the case then he would have rated Trump higher.
lamo he rated him a b which is ludicrously high@@pointlessupdate
Just starting here, kinda wondering where he’ll put Nixon.
Edit - OK.
Kinda shocked that Harding didn’t make F tier. I only know about Teapot Dome because I happened to do a project on scandals in high school.
"Woodrow Wilson was a racist… F Tier"
*Raegan calls black diplomats "monkeys"*
Consistency is key
Also creates the crack epidemic and prison state system.
its like you dont understand the difference between words and actions. kind of makes sense, though. What WW did was absolutely horrible, as Ben describes in his video. Raegan used words, oh no how horrible.
@@safersephiroth943 begone conservative simp.
Also he did much with his words, tying the fear of welfare to america's racist subconscious
Well even ignoring racism, most historians agree that Wilson was a horrible president
@@safersephiroth943 Raegan also had racist policies, which Ben didn’t even mention. I agree that Raegan was a better president than Wilson, but not using the same criteria with both of them shows lack of consistency.
Fiannaly a non biased person on TH-cam
Yeah, I was also quite surprised
I’m ready for these comments 🍿🍿
One thing I hate about political videos is biased the few people who actually say they have biased is a good TH-cam
Speeches are way more important for me, especially live from a trusted source.
theirs a such thing as a reliable source anymore
modern problems are caused by modern solutions which don't actually solve anything except for a tiny little interest group somewhere.
Not gonna lie, I learned a lot about presidents from this video.
"That's not saying much." says it all on Nixon!
Small detail, but the emancipation proclamation went the other way around. It freed the slaves within the rebellious states
Yup, and that was important because it symbolized Lincoln's complete rejection of the Confederacy and their succession.
@@-Ricky_Spanish- If I remember correctly, it also said if you come back now, you can keep the slaves
I'm surprised slightly as a history teacher he go that wrong, but also he has said he hasn't taught American history in a very long time. But still, I even knew that, and I didn't know 1/4 of the shit they brought up about each president.
@@djjazzyjeff1232 He didn't get it wrong, he said that some people argue this way and some people argue that way. Terry was careful to not take a position on the matter.
@@-Ricky_Spanish- No, he absolutely got it wrong. He said that Lincoln's policy only freed the slaves in the Union. When what it actually did was only free the slaves in the Confederacy.
With the Coolidge ranking- the thought process is that Coolidge and his policies ultimately had little to do with causing the Great Depression. Obviously Coolidge had little to do with the duration of the depression as well.
This argument stems from the belief that the Federal Reserve (the FED) was the cause of the downturn. Milton Friedman wrote extensively about it - it’s controversial and complex. To simplify- Friedman was very particular in regards to phenomena such as inflation. He specialized in the study and understanding of monetary policy. He made the observation that before the depression, the M2 quantity of money had fallen by roughly one third. Essentially a drought in liquidity caused a panic in the economy. It was the FEDs responsibility to ensure liquidity would remain as it had throughout the rest of the 20’s. The FED was a large factor for the great economic “boom” to begin with. The FED had taken on the role of ensuring bank failures wouldn’t happen - within 2 decades it had caused the greatest bank failure ever recorded.
This also puts a point against Wilson - a heavy advocate for the Federal Reserve. Most free market guys loathe the FED.
Also Hoover had a terrible response to the depression (smoot hawley tariffs) and as did FDR - it’s a hindsight problem. They continually bit themselves - FDR saw unemployment reach the 20s in the face of all of his good intentions.
It’s a hated thought, but the depression conditions were created by government oversight- and then worsened and prolonged again by more oversight.
None of it was good - the roaring 20’s were primarily artificial - it looks great for the 401ks - but slowly a monster is being built until one day it’s provoked. Today we’re seeing similar trends. That’s another story.
FDR was a terrific president for WW2, I guess that’s besides the point.
My biggest issue with his list is that he is using too much hindsight. In all fairness I think all people do, but I also think it is more important to judge people in relation to their time, as well ass discounting any issues that don't affect the country. Also, as far as why he ranked Eisenhower so low, I have to disagree that it was not good to help Hungary, that would've 100% resulted in Nuclear war. Also he seems to forget that Nationalist a China was not a good country, it was just as bad if not worse than the PRC,at least during the Chinese Civil War.
TOO MUCH HINDSIGHT?! This is literally history, how tf do you react to history if not through hindsight lmao.
Sorry, I guess I meant he applied modern standards to the people from the past. Hindsight is definitely not the right term, my bad.
@@djjazzyjeff1232 By judging a president based on the reactions/results of the time? Washington was a terrible president because he was racist. Y'know why thats an unfair statement created by hindsight bias? Because who wasn't?
@@Killerbee4712 Ok? So what's your point? The ONLY way to view history is through hindsight. Because it's the past. It's literally in the definition of the word history lol.
@@djjazzyjeff1232 My point was you CAN remove hindsight bias, which I just did. Hindsight isnt an inherent part of "looking at the past" its the bias we CARRY through hindsight that affects our correct judgement of his history. So people are saying that hindsight BIAS is affecting our judgement of these characters, not that we use hindsight. Speaking of which, are we both on the same wavelength of the word "hindsight"? lets look it up: "understanding of a situation or event only after it has happened or developed". That means characters performing the actions in the moment dont have such "hidnsight", and as a result cannot be judged unfairly for not being able to predict the future. An unfair statement would be "the german people should've not voted for Hitler because he started ww2". That's a historical insight that carries hindsight bias. Can we look at history withOUT hindsight? Yes. "The Germans did not know that Hitler was going to start a world war when they voted for him as early as 1928, and as a result, cannot be entirely faulted for the rise of Hitler's power. By eliminating hindsight, you can achieve context, and through context, you can begin to understand things in more complex manners.
Can't believe he called Woodrow Wilson a "socialist" when in his memoir "Brother Woodrow" he frequently asserts his fondness of the rising fascist state in Italy and frequently condemned the newly founded USSR.
Facism is a form of socialism