Well-Behaved, Pragmatic People Have NEVER Aspired to Greatness

[rucky]

Leaders who bring change are passionate and idealistic.
Leaders who bring change are often flawed.
Leaders who bring change have a clear and forceful message.
Leaders who bring change rise from the ranks of the oppressed.
Leaders who bring change are met with great resistance, and proceed undauntedly.
Leaders who bring change are usually doing it on a shoestring - with minimal organizational and financial backing.
Leaders who bring change inspire similar independent ACTION among individuals and smaller groups.
Mass movements that bring change is the collective culmination of these actions.
Mass movements that bring change do no have perfect internal harmony, but they get past that for the bigger picture.

Change is never pretty, civilized, organized or safe.

Remeber this next time a leader comes along. Resist the urge to bring passionate and idealistic people down to reality. There's plenty of reality to go around and not enough ideals.

[RubyDuby in GA]

1. Wow. I wonder how Jimmy Carter ever made it out of Plains, GA?

Oh that's right....he was a hell of a firebrand! :sarcasm:

Not every great leader has to be spitting nails either. Very broad brushstroke you're painting with...

[calico1]

3. Not to mention Martin Luther King and Ghandi.

Both known for their crazy, nutjob way of getting their message across.:eyes:

[rucky]

8. What's crazy about my description?

I actually had MLK in mind when I made the list.

The SCLC wasn't the only game in town - there was plenty of infighting, power stuggles, etc...and he did have his personal flaws re: women. But he was about as passionate as a person can get, and his speeches, essays and calls for action brought change. that's what brought change.

You really don't think MLK or Ghandi were radicals in their time?

[calico1]

16. Okay, I understand what you meant now.

:hi:

[Lars39]

4. Jimmy has a way of nailing the truth, though.

[rpgamerd00d]

5. rotflmao! Nice job working in his carpenter skills there! Brilliant!

[Lars39]

17. I'm catching on to this re-framing thing.

bud um pum. :D

[donco6]

6. Yes - you're exactly right.

These lists of "leadership qualities" are always stereotypical. I've known great leaders of all stripes. It's not the qualities so much as what they accomplish that determines their greatness.

[rucky]

9. There are leaders who govern and leaders who bring change.

since we don't have any opening in the leaders who govern position, I figured we might want to fill the latter.

[Lars39]

2. Excellent reminders.

Honest to gawd, last night I saw someone state that Sheehan was not a peace activist. :eyes:

[cali]

7. Bullshit

Great leaders can be thoughtful, reflective, calm and have a sense of humor. Doesn't happen often enough, but it does happen.

[Lars39]

10. Where in the OP was any of those characteristics ruled out?

[rucky]

12. Like who?

My point is, history always lionizes the leaders after change is successful. The process is actually much uglier. The people we look to in history were RADICALS at the time.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

15. I'd say that was certainly true

of the founding fathers.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

13. Like Al Gore

and JFK wasn't up from the oppressed, nor was his brother.

But the list has some merit. Change is painful.

But there ARE individuals who are all those things (or at least some) who would lead us in some pretty extreme directions. The trick is figuring out which is which.

[PassingFair]

11. DEAN .... n/t

[rucky]

14. oh yeah...he's one.

we have lots of them stepping up - BEGGING to lead us.

[Lexingtonian]

18. oy

You unfortunately left out the qualifier "from the part of the Left I believe in and belong to".

Caesar and FDR and Lincoln were not idealistic, nor from the ranks of the oppressed. Hitler was more of those two things, as was Nixon.

"Clear and forceful" is the eye/ear of the beholder. The words "relevant" and "desperately needed by common people" do not occur to you.

As for your conclusion, don't forget Ambrose Bierce's definition of revolution as a change in the form of misgovernment.

Real transformation of the world emanates from small groups. Jesus and the twelve Apostles did more to change the world than the Churches have done since. Forty men, or so, wrote the American Constitution. The world's less than 1,000 physicists created the atomic bomb. Louis Pasteur saved more lives than any antibiotic or surgeon ever will. Gandhi liberated India from the British with a minimum of violence.

You can't win an improvement in civilization by becoming barbaric yourself. It has never worked, it never will, and it cannot.

No, ideals that hang in midair are always destroyed. It's the humble notions that root in reality and respect reality that grow, flower, and bear fruit.

[PATRICK]

19. Tolstoy and "greatness"

greatness eventually is a bully term to cover both horrendous crimes and incredible gaffes as if certain people by dint of having achieved the grade can never be marked down. Also it gives too much credit to leaders and not to the supports that enabled them and sustained them and more importantly protected them.

A great car on a lousy infrastructure road will be a great failure, ahead of its time, etc. Then there is that definition of leadership. it can be skewed in any direction, by the people who don't support good leadership or the bad leaders who blind and blindside their people. Historians often rate presidents for example on "success"- that is whether they got their agendas through no matter what the advantages(one party rule) or the horrors and results thereof. A "failed" presidency is one that doesn't get its program passed, something many have desperately tried to tag onto Clinton and JFK in the past. That standard makes Bush "greater", despite being much more radical too.

How far would MLK gotten with today's SCOTUS and POTUS and the people under the sway of today's media without any Internet? Christians also spread more easily because of the Pax Romana and Roman roads and Roman slavery and syncretism miasma.

I think we have to wake up to the fact that though leaders of change are few, our stock in infrastructure has raised in terms of education, prosperity, communication and science. A huge dissatisfaction with the artificial tops of culture and power is making these masses feel and openly wonder why so much disabling, dysfunctional crap sits on the top of an era of hope. By sheer numbers one would expect how many Christs, Buddhas, Mohammeds, Einsteins, Michelangelos, Beethovens, Gandhis, MLKs and maybe even troll kings of a higher quality than Bush 2 or magnates like Carnegie and Rockefeller? How on earth has absolutist mediocrity come to cheerfully, arrogantly rule the roost as a radical total sum push to global disaster?

In part because the shakers and makers, themselves excluded from the real top ranks of actual talent are trying to soften the brain and radicalism of the planet as a reaction to past gaffes and wars for capitalist globalism- and instead- as the mediocre must always do- and killing progress and opening wounds for wolves to lick. Mini-Herods rules at their conferences in the Alps.

Your post is one cry about this situation in context. The problem is greater in fuller context and gives one pause about looking for some one timely person or idea to get us out of this morass. If the Internet is the Grande Armee de la Communication do we desire a Napoleon to throw it around for personal greatness?

[Tsiyu]

20. I love you, rucky

K&R

This is the best post I've read in a month.

:yourock:

[WildEyedLiberal]

21. The first and most important requirement of leadership is moral courage

One need not be a screamin' firebrand to possess the moral courage and fortitude required to be a leader. Al Gore and John Kerry are good examples of men who have never been described as "passionate" (though I beg to differ on both accounts) or "belongning to the ranks of the oppressed," yet whose message carries moral clarity, vision, and iron-clad principles.

[rucky]

23. I see them as EXCELLENT leaders ...who govern.

they have failed to bring change, though.

I'm talking about a certain kind of leader, but I would agree that moral courage is a must no matter what.

[WildEyedLiberal]

25. Sadly, they haven't been placed in a position to enact their vision

America would be blessed with either of those men at the helm.

[Taxloss]

22. Simply untrue.

There are legions of people who have brought change while being well-behaved and pragmatic. Clement Attlee for one.

[meganmonkey]

24. I get, it, rucky

Great post. Nominated.

I think some people around here like to argue for argument's sake!