Word: 20th
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When TIME asked nine presidential historians to rank, from best to worst, the 17 American Presidents of the 20th century, we left some questions to their discretion: What do we expect from our leaders? Are effective Presidents also the most significant ones? What constitutes greatness? Here is our panel's consensus...
...when later we evoke the 20th century, among the first names that will surge to mind will be that of a fanatic with a mustache who thought to reign by selling the soul of his people to the thousand demons of hate and of death...
...political history of the 20th century can be written as the biographies of six men: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. The first four were totalitarians who made or used revolutions to create monstrous dictatorships. Roosevelt and Churchill differed from them in being democrats. And Churchill differed from Roosevelt--while both were war leaders, Churchill was uniquely stirred by the challenge of war and found his fulfillment in leading the democracies to victory...
...this identity crisis be traced back to Ben-Gurion and the founding mothers and fathers of Israel? Were they no more than a bunch of lunatics, attempting to perform on a 20th century stage a bizarre blend of biblical yearnings, 19th century nationalism, socialism and Jewish Messianism? Did Ben-Gurion, at the end of the day, devote his life to a fleeting, surreal vision of resurrecting the Jewish people as a modern, democratic nation in their ancient land...
Some ask, focusing on this strategy, whether Khomeini was riding a popular wave in global affairs. In the late 20th century, Muslims were not alone in organizing to restore religious belief to government. Christians in America, Jews in Israel, even Hindus in India were promoting the same end. As a revolutionary, Khomeini sought to bring down not just the Shah's Western-oriented state but also the secular Weltanschauung that stood behind it. Did Khomeini's triumph augur an intellectual shift of global magnitude...