Great Souls

...But Mandela most assuredly did demand something from white South Africans in exchange for his forgiveness: majority rule...

...de Klerk, that he must give in to Mandela's demands, "because if you don't, we are going to humiliate you...

...But there are several problems with Aikman's depiction of Mandela as the Great Forgiver...

...An important point to emerge from And what of our civilization, and the Great Souls is that long before the Soviet decline of faith in its spiritual under-Union's demise, both John Paul II and pinnings...

...But despite their status as Nobel Laureates, two of Aikman's "Great Souls" should never have made the cut: Nelson Mandela and Elie Wiesel...

...I think it is fair to say that whereas the other "Great Souls" in Aikman's book find strength and solace in their faith, Wiesel is tormented by his inability to believe in the God of his forefathers...

...What changed Aikman's mind was Mandela's determination, despite his prolonged incarceration under apartheid, to work for reconciliation between white and black South Africans...

...For that alone," Aikman writes, "for the introduction of the virtue of forgiveness into the ravaged countryside of twentieth-century politics—Nelson Mandela is reckoned among the Great Souls...

...mately raises...

...This approach does not strike me as particularly forgiving...

...As a foreign correspondent for Time magazine, he writes, he had never found Mandela a particularly attractive figure: He had seemed to pick up over the years some international admirers for whom I had very little admiration or respect: Muammar Gadhafi of Libya, for example, Fidel Castro and Yassir Arafat...

...Of the six "Great Souls" profiled by Aikman, four figures—Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Pope John Paul II—are obvious choices...

...Like many Holocaust survivors, Wiesel finds it impossible to believe in the kindness and loving-mercy of the Judeo-Christian God...

...A new biography of Nelson Mandela by Martin Meredith—not cited by Aikman—casts the African revolutionary in a less flattering light...

...But coming from an extremely pious Jewish background, Wiesel finds it equally impossible to abandon his belief in such a God...

...Another, even more basic problem with Aikman's portrait of Mandela is the point, made by Aikman himself, that "unless [forgiveness] is conferred on others without demanding anything in return, it is not genuine...

...African National Congress Party included in its midst dedicated Communists who presumably would have rejoiced had the Soviet Union won the Cold War...

...But in addition to being pious Christians, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Pope John Paul II are serious intellectuals, and one wishes that Aikman's depiction of these "Great Souls" took greater account of their ideas...

...Still, Aikman's portrait of Solzhenitsyn—the fanatical Marxist-Leninist (during his honeymoon, Solzhenitsyn actually read Karl Marx's Das Kapital ) who, thanks to his experiences in Stalin's camps, became a devout Christian—is quite moving, as is his depiction of the Polish Pope who as a teenager would often withdraw into prayer, and who even today The American Spectator • July 1998 75 spends up to seven hours a day interceding Unlike Solzhenitsyn and John Paul II, with God on behalf of a fallen humanity...

...Although he is a Holocaust survivor who has written eloquently about that terrible event, he has not enlarged our understanding of twentieth century evil the way Solzhenitsyn has...

...In Mandela's case, Aikman himself expresses reservations...

...Their per- Souls," or will our society slowly but inexspicacity stands in marked contrast to the orably run out of spiritual energy, in obtuseness of academic Sovietologists, much the same way that Communist most of whom were utterly taken aback by societies did — thereby confirming the depth and speed of the Soviet col- Solzhenitsyn's contention that liberal-lapse...

...they did not really grasp the key point that Both of these men had a lot to do with the Marxism-Leninism was essentially a rival destruction of the Soviet Union, and it was religion, and that the withering of belief their faith that made them such determined in that religion necessarily entailed the adversaries of the Evil Empire...

...Meredith quotes Mandela as telling South Africa's then-President, F.W...

...For one thing, there is the question of Wiesel's achievement...

...Elie Wiesel's inclusion in Aikman's roster of "Great Souls" poses problems of a different sort...

...Can an increasingly secular Solzhenitsyn had concluded that the culture continue to produce "Great empire's days were numbered...

...Then there is the issue of Elie Wiesel's faith...

...That is the deeply weight, levels of agricultural productivity troubling issue that Great Souls ultiand factional rivalries in the Kremlin...

...The result is that Wiesel's religious views are deeply ambivalent...

...Worse, Mandela's JOSEPH SHATTAN, a Bradley Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, is working on a book tentatively titled Heroes of the Cold War...

...Perhaps it is unfair to judge a man by those who are eager to appear his friends, but if Mandela thought well of Gadhafi, financier and armorer of terrorist groups from Northern Ireland to the Southern Philippines, what could he have in common with greatness...

...In other words, Aikman has essentially taken Mandela's account of his life at face value...

...And while he is a humanitarian who has hosted numerous high-level conferences, nothing he has ever said or done has had anything like the impact of, say, a Billy Graham crusade...

...To begin with, of the 81 footnotes in Aikman's chapter on Mandela, 37 come from one source: Mandela's autobiography...

...But by assembling lively portraits of individuals who, acting out of deep religious conviction, have had an enormously beneficial impact on our age, Great Souls should go a long way toward dispelling the Washington Post's infamous caricature of people of faith as "poor, uneducated and easy to command...

...Great Souls: Six Who Changed the Century David Aikman Word Publishing /388 pages / $23 REVIEWED BY Joseph Shattan Although liberals pride themselves on their tolerance, they are sharply prejudiced against three groups: the rich, the right, and the religious...

...Now that he has attained his political objectives, it remains to be seen how long Mandela's conciliatory policies will remain in place...

...And I will see to it that that happens...

...collapse of the civilization built upon it...

...04 76 July 19 9 8 • The American Spectator...

...Of the remaining figures in his book, Aikman is most successful with his portraits of Billy Graham and Mother Teresa, perhaps because their ideas—in Graham's case, bringing Christ's words to mankind, and in Mother Teresa's, serving Christ by ministering to the destitute —are not very complicated...

...Aikman attributes this determination to Mandela's Christian faith, and believes that he, more than any other contemporary statesman, embodies the Christian virtue of forgiveness...

...This is a dubious practice for any biographer to follow—not because Mandela is necessarily untruthful, but because he is human, and therefore prone to interpret events in a way most favorable to himself...

...But then, the academics were ism and Communism share a common focused on such matters as missile throw- "materialist" bias...

...David Aikman's engrossing new book, Great Souls, will do nothing to undermine the conviction that the rich gained their money unfairly and must therefore be taxed exorbitantly, or that right-wingers are simply fascists awaiting an opportunity to come out of the closet...