Your interpretation of the man is very biased by principles put into practise well after his time...Your interpretation of the man is very biased by principles put into practise well after his time.


Sorry, Robo, but its hardly "my interpretation". I ask again: have you read his CONTEMPORARY critics- those that wrote of his activities during his lifetime: Tarbell, Teddy Roosevelt, Lloyd, dozens of others including Mark Twain? Apparently not.

You might get a more balanced view of the man should you care to sample a few authors in addition to Chernow.

The subsequent "crimes of the communists" don't make Trotsky's observation any less valid.

He did for oil what Bill Gates would later do for operating systems.

Precisely! they both ran monopolies & engaged in shady practices that led to legal action to break them up. You're not holding Microsoft up as a model corporation, I hope, or Gates as a model citizen.

You seem to be willing to absolve John D. senior- the prince of monopoly capitalists and a robber baron of renown- of any responsibility whatsoever in the corruption he participated in, the abject misery he caused, the lives he ENDED, and all the rest simply because toward the very end of his life he attempted to buy his way into heaven (like he bought his way into everything else in his life) by distributing an infinitesimal fraction of his accumulated wealth in "good works".

I don't think absolution can be purchased so cheaply, if at all. Apparently you do.