Col. Jessep questioned his questioner’s ability to handle truth. No truth-handler, he!
Colonel Nathan Jessep testified, in A Few Good Men:
You can’t handle the truth!
I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I’d rather you just said thank you and went on your way.
Some may hear in Jessep’s testimony echoes of an ends-justify-means world view. That Machiavelli thing.
We recoil at leaders like Jessep, who calmly do sickening things to fulfill their conception of service to country. Why? Blawgletter surmises for the same reason many can’t abide the smug evasions of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. We think: What a knucklehead! Who put him in charge of doing sickening things? Yikes!
Barry Barnett
