Happy birthday, Nelson Mandela!

No one is without fault. And when I look at civil rights/civil disobedience pioneers of the last century, I don't see how you don't put Mandela right there on the list with Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. None of them were perfect men, in their private or public lives. But each achieved a type of greatness that is rare. They were born into unjust socities with outright policies of racism and they seized their moments in time to do amazing, inspirational things and to bring about change with beautiful spirits and souls, through leadership they were able to demonstrate despite the hatred they had to stare down.

When you say Mandela was no Gandhi, don't forget that even though Gandhi played a role in South Africa earlier in his life, the struggle he fought for in India was independence, and the British rule over India was somewhat less insidious than apartheid was to South Africa--even if they treated the Indians poorly. Gandhi studied at the University level in England and was a lawyer. He was afforded opportunities that Nelson Mandela could have never dreamed of early in his life, even if once Gandhi got back to India, his education did little to protect him from racism that held him down.

But because Gandhi was educated, could have assimilated and lived a much better life than Mandela could have ever dreamed of, would you argue that Gandhi was no Mandela in terms of scope? It seems about the same as saying, Mandela was no Gandhi, because as a young man he advocated violent resistance -- something that seems perfectly understandable to me and is remarkable in its own way, given that 99.9 percent of the black people living under apartheid felt NO ability to resist at all because it was that suffocating.

To me, they were both remarkable men, ideological leaders who brought about just change, and rose to greatness in the face of overwhelming odds, in ways that 99.9 percent of the rest of us couldn't. They had something special.