Reply #29: Right.

[H2O Man]

Great men have great faults.

I like to read a wide range of books, even when I do not share the beliefs of the author. For example, among the "new" books I bought last weekend, on a semi-annual trip to the best regional bookstore, was David Garrow's "Bearing the Cross" (Perennial; 1999). The book presents Martin as,in Arthus Schlesinger Jr's review, "a great leader in all of his frailty and all of his valor."

Time's review of the book calls it, "Provocative .... a complex and convincing portrait." And that is important. For as one of Martin's family members said, he wasn't a "saint," he was a human being. When we take away a Martin or a Gandhi's humanity, and turn them into what Martin's co-workers called a "plaster saint," or place them on a stained-glass window, separate from human beings, we do both them and ourselves a terrible disservice.

Great men have great faults. There is a section in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, where Malcolm's world has come undone, and he is searching for evidence in the sacred texts, to show that great men have great faults. He finds evidence in the bibical stories of Noah, Lot, and others. He understands that when we look at and admire the lives of great men, it is because of their ability to overcome their human weaknesses, and accomplish things requiring great inner strength.

Yet in "Make It Plain," one of the most important books about Malcolm, one of the women who knew and loved Malcolm said that we must not allow ourselves to make Malcolm a mere projection of our own hopes and needs. He was a great man, but he was a human being. Every school student should learn of Malcolm, and to realize that he had much more in common with them, than that which separates them.

It's the same with Martin and Mohandas. Exactly the same. And just as Malcolm, in a discussion of the Dead Sea Scrolls with CBS's Mike Wallace, said that we need to take the prophet Jesus off those stained-glass windows, and keep him in the context of the human family if he is to have real meaning, the same holds for Gandhi.

Did he have many of the faults described in this thread? Absolutely! Yet these faults do not take away from his greatness; exactly the opposite. The "weakness" lies entirely in the inability of some to grasp that truth. But that particular "weakness" is nothing for us to frown upon .... no one starts at the finish line.