Become ones in the course of nature, that is. It’s still possible, but it requires a metanoia, a conversion of some sort. Which may explain why so many boomers who have managed to become grown-ups despite ourselves are either religious or in recovery.

And a democratic republic, too, can be designed by geniuses and run by idiots.

Philip Queeg Public High School

I’ll admit I was on pretty thin ground: I haven’t even ever seen the whole movie.  The speech seemed to say precisely what Shannon had been describing and the difference between the skillful manipulator of ideas & words – and the lawyer struck me. And Queeg – well, in my childhood the crazy clicking that accompanied his raving was a standard allusion on television shows. I have seen that speech and would not, of course, like to board a boat headed into about any kind of weather with him as captain.

I do think Ferrer’s argument is one that intellectual abstractions are simplistic & not very wise ways to deal with human complexity.  And certainly he is talking about responsibility. But, of course, he knew what he could draw out of Bogart on the stand and did.

An aside to David: We were talking at lunch today and though we remember our parents as all reading Wouk in our youths – the fifties & early sixties – but only the much younger guy in our group had read this book – or, as we remember, any of them.  I remember them around the house. I came home & asked my husband – yes, he’d read it in high school. They both read a lot, but then, so did we. It could be because we women (girls then) tended to see them as guy books. There seemed a lot more guy books then.

Queeg’s behavior in combat cannot be considered courageous: he drops the yellow dye stain because he is so eager to turn the ship around and get out of there.

The point Wouk makes (through the lawyer) is that while Queeg is a man with many deficiencies, he does deserve some credit for choosing to serve at a time when few did so…and that his officers contributed to his final collapse through their hostile attitude, instigated by the intellectual. Based on Queeg’s behavior from the earliest days, though, I think it’s ambiguous whether he would have been up to handling the typhoon even if his wardroom had been 100% supportive.

For those who have only seen the movie, the book adds considerable depth, and continues after the court-martial is over.

Your allusion to Bush indicates that you want to say he is a terrible president and will use any segue to say that. You come to this blog often enough that you might realize this isn’t considered all that adequate an argument here. Even those who don’t like Bush are likely to see it as off putting. And the writer of this post – the person with whom you are theoretically beginning this dialogue – is clearly someone who doesn’t accept as a given that Bush is one of the worst presidents this nation has seen. (And of course, it goes without saying, he has made mistakes, the people of the right often make mistakes. They, too, are human. We are flawed creatures with flawed judgments.)

Also, Jose Ferrer’s position is not that Bogart hasn’t gone crazy, that he wasn’t a flawed and even a limited man before this series of crises. But Ferrer – and not McMurray – sees life and men as complicated and causes as various. He would argue that McMurray’s notions about life, men, courage, the service are not just wrong but destructive in their speculative (and cynical) nature. The application of abstract generalities to real life is harmful to everyone involved (except McMurray) because of the rigid simplicity of theory. However, they are especially dangerous when accompanied by a lack of human kindness and absence of sympathy with human nature. However, that lack is not so apparent to those who live their life in words and not in acts, in judgments of others rather than in interaction with them.

There’s absolutely no objectivity. And the fact that Leftists say how horrible Bush is with such glee goes to thier mentality. When conservatives complained about Clinton, they didn’t do so with job, but with amount of regret because he was our president and we dont like it when the President is flawed as the country gets damaged.

If Leftists loved thier country then they wouldn’t go out of their way to gloat about how bad Bush is.

But considering how they lied about Bush since the very beginning, we’re suppposed to take anythiung they say about the guy at face value? They want everyone to think he’s the devil that they wont shut up about it. For people who think a mistake is a lie, I wonder how they would view real lies? Well when the liars are the Clintons it doesn’t matter a bit. Yet Bush’s non-lies are enough for them to want him assisinated.

It’s so outgragious how disingenious a lot of Leftists are. I wonder if it will ever end, or are we to endure this the rest of our lives when them getting more and more irrational.

Now the Left and Carter may be all you say–and I do not Carter–but to say that being adult we are acco0untable for our actions etc is just fine: now apply it to the guy in the White House, surely one of the worst presidents this nation has yet seen. And he is no “lefty.”

http://www.heritage.org/Press/Events/ev030507a.cfm

To see how the Left operates as a mob and is anti-individual read Tammy Bruce’s “The New Thought Police: Inside the Left’s Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds ”

http://www.amazon.com/New-Thought-Police-Inside-Assault/dp/0761563733/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-5185531-7876761?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173892014&sr=1-1

And then finally, see the Left in action today in the face of our profound Islamic enemies.. see how no principal is too good for them to betray when it comes to hating thier own countries read

“What’s Left” by Nick Cohen (A UK Leftist)

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Left-Nick-Cohen/dp/0007229690/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-5185531-7876761?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173891951&sr=8-1

Armed with this information, you can see them for the bankrupt shock troops that they are.

Remember that Chicago Boyz essay by Shannon Love I linked to a few weeks back on the left? A flurry of commenters objected that it was too broard based and over-generalized. Well, he updated that with a folllow up … but
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