Was Ghandi Really So Great?

I never knew very much about Ghandi. His name is often referred to in a very reverential manner, as though he is someone to be worshipped. He led India's independence movement from Britain. But the empire shed most of its colonies during the mid-twentieth century anyway. And I always wonder about some guy who ran around in his underwear all the time.

Fred Thompson has a very revealing article about Ghandi in National Review Online:

During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” “Collective suicide,” he told his biographer, “would have been heroism.”

Collective suicide is heroism? Hmmmmmmmm..... I would hate to learn what Ghandi would call cowardice.

Now that I think about it, the people whom I recall speaking reverentially of Ghandi were those of the.....well.....you know those people I don't like whom I refer to collectively as the "left". Now it all makes sense. When they're not worshipping butchers like Che Guevara or Mao Tse Tung, they are worshipping half-naked pygmies who advise others to "offer themselves to the butcher's knife".

Hat tip to Powerline. They refer to Ghandi as "the most overrated man of the twentieth century". Perhaps the underwear man should also get an award for the most underrated villain?