One of my professors pointed out that with virtually any significant "leader," there had to be an equivalent receptive audience. That is to say that without the egomaniacle Adolf Hitler there would have been no Nazi party, etc, etc, but without the social and political circumstances of post WW1 Germany (and Europe in general), there could have been no Adolf Hitler. The same could be said of Ghandi, though clearly in a radically different way. There do seem to be leaders who break out more clearly from their surroundings (Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King come to mind most readily), but move them 50 years forward or back and I wonder if they would have had the same kind of significant influence. Perhaps the most obvious overstatement is that we are all prisoners of our own time of history, but within every generation there are true visionaries (some good, some evil) that manage to seize the moment and are able to marshall the existing forces to achieve their goals. The blessing of hindsight hopefully will allow us to support the Lincolns, the Kings, and the Ghandis, while overcoming the Hitlers, the Bin Ladens, and the Husseins. Regardless of color or political leaning, good is still good, and evil is still evil.

Freightdawg.