Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (43348)	5/10/2004 5:50:41 PM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Respond to of 793732

I'm neither applauding nor condoning mistakes. But I'm not folding just because we aren't perfect. We can't be. That's not a reasonable expectation. Our response to those mistakes is what defines us, just as much as our honest intentions going in. And it's exactly our response to our own mistakes that will do more on a practical level to determine the outcome than our abstract intentions and expectations on going in. If we can't keep our own failures in perspective, then we have no chance to succeed. Winston Churchill was largely responsible for the buildup of the British Navy in the first half of the past century. British capital ships were death traps, disasters. They were poorly designed and inclined to blow up almost on contact. Jutland proved this, and the sinking of the Hood by the Bismarck was just a late example. Churchill should have been ridden out of town on a rail. But he wasn't. And it's a damn good thing for England that he wasn't, because his failures, horrific as they were, were minor in retrospect, in the greater scheme of things, because he prevailed on the strategic level.