|
 Lev Navrozov emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1972 He settled in New York City where he quickly learned that there was no market for his eloquent and powerful English language attacks on the Soviet Union. To this day, he writes without fear or favor or the conventions of polite society. He chaired the "Alternative to the New York Times Committee" in 1980, challenged the editors of the New York Times to a debate (which they declined) and became a columnist for the New York City Tribune. His columns are today read in both English and Russian.
|
 |
Two responses to my column “Democracy's Downside . . . Einstein Would Have Gotten 7 Votes” (WorldTribune.com, Jan. 9, 2005) are worth public discussion.
One response is as short as it is powerful:
I withdraw Roger's second name because I am not sure he wants it to be known publicly, given his fearless opposition to the “world that has truly gone mad.” His response expresses the views of highly intelligent Americans (and other Westerners) judging by the e-mails I receive. They feel that they have been living in a political wilderness except for my voice: China (population: 1.3 billion) has been developing post-nuclear superweapons since 1986, with Putin's Russia having become last December its official military ally, whereas all the buzz in the political wilderness since 1991 has been about Iraq, then about Yugoslavia, then about Afghanistan, and then about Iraq again (and now about Iran?).
I want to make only one remark about Roger's response.
He speaks of “a world that has truly gone mad.” Those who are clinically insane do unintentional harm to themselves, and not only to others. The democratic West has been doing unintentional harm to itself by refusing to see the mortal danger for about 15 years. But the “supreme leaders” of China have been using the insane democratic West to achieve their world domination and thus avoid what happened to the Soviet dictatorship in 1991 and might have happened to them in 1989. There is nothing insane about it.
Characteristically, few statesmen of the democratic West called Hitler insane BEFORE his defeat, with his final suicide. In 1938 he was, in the eyes of the majority of the democratic West, a brilliant peaceful German leader, and after 1939 he became a genius of conventional warfare and a mortally dangerous enemy.
The other response I submit to public discussion came on Jan. 14 from Ralph McGaughey, Boston. I do not withdraw his second name because his goal is obviously polemical. Since I have no time to engage in private polemics, I disclose the names of the authors in public polemics — just as magazines or newspapers disclose the names of those who send “letters to the editor” — unless my reader requests me not to.
The gist of my column “Democracy's Downside . . .” was that in science and technology no one is surprised that Einstein, the greatest scientist of the 20th century in his field, space-time physics, was originally understood by only 7 individuals on earth. The greater the intellectual achievement, the fewer are those who even understand it, to say nothing of achieving the same. Now, outside science and technology, the pyramid of intellectual achievement is put in a democracy upside down: the larger the number of those who believe in, for example, the mortal danger of Hussein's Iraq (and not of China since 1986!), the truer and more valuable is their belief or thought, owing to which the U.S. president and members of the U.S. Congress are elected.
The subject line of McGaughey's e-mail is “Politics and Einstein,” and this is its first paragraph:
“The man [Einstein] was a fool. If he was not a communist he was always willing to front for them. At best he was a patsy. Einstein was a terrible example to use.”
I spoke of Einstein as a scientist of genius in his field, space-time physics, and McGaughey proclaims that he was a fool because he sympathized with Stalin's Russia after Hitler came to power and before Stalin launched nationalist-Russian anti-Semitism.
What about those scientists of genius who were developing nuclear and other weapons for Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, as well as for Stalin's and Mao's successors?
I mentioned Einstein as an example of a scientist of genius in his field, and McGaughey assumes that the greatest scientist of the 20th century in his field was a fool because he was not equally intelligent outside his field, namely in politics. You see, he sympathized for a while with Stalin's Russia!
Stalin launched his nationalist-Russian anti-Semitism in 1943 and kept intensifying it up to his preparations before his death in 1953 for his version of Hitler's Final Solution. Very early in this process, Einstein, who turned down the invitation to visit Stalin's Russia, sent a letter to Stalin in which Einstein condemned him for his anti-Semitism in sharper terms than Stalin ever heard.
On the other hand, from 1941 to 1946 all statesmen of the democratic West glorified Stalin, and even after his “Iron Curtain speech” at Fulton, MO, on March 5, 1946, Churchill said that it was not Stalin, but his subordinates, who should be blamed for the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe. You see, those wicked subordinates deceived the noble “Marchal Stalin.” In one of my first articles in “Commentary,” I quoted Churchill's speech in Parliament in which he said that he would not allow to speak in his presence disrespectfully of “Marchal Stalin.”
McGaughey's e-mail is noteworthy because he does not wish to understand what I mean: he sees in my column words such as “Einstein,” and presents what he knows about Einstein, namely, the scientist's short-lived sympathy for Soviet Russia, from which it follows that the greatest scientist of the 20th century (in his field, of course) was a fool in general.
Having established that, McGaughey continues:
“William F. Buckley is much quoted for having stated that he would rather be governed by men chosen at random from the telephone book than by the faculty of Harvard. Most people concur. Degrees do not always indicate common sense.”
I deeply respect Buckley (who, incidentally, invited me to lunch after my first article in “Commentary, and who published my articles in his “National Review”). But Buckley's statement McGaughey cites above is not “common sense,” but a witty paradox. To think that those on the faculty of Harvard are more intelligent than those chosen at random from the telephone book are a delusion. But Buckley's paradox that the latter are more intelligent than the former is witty, but is also a delusion, if taken seriously.
Incidentally, Einstein was not admitted to any university when he was developing his theory of relativity. Not to starve, he had to work as a clerk in a patent office.
McGaughey discovers what is “the highest human intelligence” as the opposite of fools like Einstein or “the faculty of Harvard” (the fool Einstein is assumed to have been produced by academia).
“The case can be made that the highest human intelligence is the intelligence of consensus. That is, while every individual may be wrong, together they are mostly right. Each brings a bit of learning. Remember the three blind men who described an elephant. One knew the tail, one the trunk, etc. Each was wildly off base. But if their ideas were put together, you would have come closest to an elephant.”
Actually, university professors like “the faculty of Harvard” play a decisive role in what McGaughey calls “the intelligence of consensus” or democracy. They pop up as guests on all mainstream TV shows. The U.S. presidents, members of the U.S. government and U.S. Congress, as well as their subordinates, advisers, and speechwriters have university degrees (preferably from Ivy League universities like Harvard or Yale).
Well, “the intelligence of consensus” has “come closest to an elephant.” This “elephant in the drawing room” is China in alliance with Putin's Russia since last December 13. But “the intelligence of consensus” does not see the elephant unless and until the elephant crushes the democratic West, along with “the intelligence of consensus.”
The last paragraph of McGaughey's e-mail consists of one short sentence: “Democracy protects us, hopefully, from the manias of the elite.”
If McGaughey means by “the elite” those with academic degrees such as “the faculty of Harvard,” today's U.S. democracy is ruled by this “elite,” which is the only segment of the population plus billionaires like Trump and Soros that is publicly audible and visible in the mainstream media.
The manias of this “elite”? Yes, its shrill belief since 1991 that the United States should spend on the conquest of Iraq “x” years, “y” lives, and “z” dollars (to the glee of the “supreme leaders” of China) is a mania, nay, stark madness (even for those who are safe for the time being and expect more Iraqi oil shares), since the mortal danger of China in alliance with Putin's Russia has been growing.
During the inauguration of the president we also saw “the mass protests” against the war in Iraq, as reported, for example, by Amy Goodman's “Democracy Now.” Is she, and are her viewers, part of the “elite”? Neither she, nor any “war protesters,” shown on the TV screens, has mentioned the mortal threat of China in alliance with Putin's Russia. All “war protesters” shown on the screens were not against the geostrategically absurd war in Iraq in the shadow of “the China threat,” but against anything military, on the assumption that singing, dancing, and making love is better than getting killed. It is the “anti-Vietnam-war movement” all over again when conformists like John Kerry first volunteered for the war and then carried the posters “Make Love, Not War” or “Nothing Is Worth Dying For.”
Incidentally, the “anti-Iraq war movement” does not bring closer the end of the geostrategically absurd Iraq war. Quite the contrary; those who support this geostrategic nonsense look in comparison with the anti-Iraq war protesters as heroic defenders of the United States and world freedom versus adult children too sheltered to have any notion of war even in the age of post-nuclear superweapons or be concerned with anything except their physical well-being.
Once upon a time, there used to be the REAL elite — nationally or internationally known thinkers, such as John Dewey or William James in the United States, whom I have mentioned in my column. The REAL elite are also those intelligent Americans like Roger, I quote above, who understand that the democratic West, with France and Germany expressing a few days ago their intention to begin to sell weapons to the dictatorship of China, is, functionally, insane.
Against the REAL elite the United States is reliably protected, while the entire “intelligence of consensus,” including “the faculty of Harvard,” has been, functionally, in a state of insanity to which Roger's e-mail refers.
Nor is the insane suicidal blindness of “the intelligence of consensus” to a mortal danger (the development of post-nuclear superweapons in the dictatorship of China) something unprecedented. When Chamberlain brought to England in 1938 as “peace in our time” — a scrap of paper signed by Hitler in exchange for part of Czechoslovakia, “the vast majority of the British people,” and not just the faculty of Oxford or Cambridge, was delirious with joy. If not for Hitler's mistakes, such as the seizure in 1939 of “the rump of Czechoslovakia,” instead of concentrating all resources of Germany on the “peaceful” development of nuclear weapons, the democratic West would have become a Nazi colony, with genocide and all, and with many inhabitants of the Nazi colony glorifying Hitler as most Germans glorified him before his defeat of 1941/42 at Moscow.
* * * * *
For more information about Drexler's Foresight Institute and its lobbying in Congress, see www.foresight.org
To learn more about the Chris Phoenix report, suggesting a “nano Manhattan Project,” go to crnano.org.
For information about the Center for the Survival of Western Democracies, Inc., including how you can help, please e-mail me at navlev@cloud9.net.
The link to my book online is www.levnavrozov.com. You can also request our webmaster@levnavrozov.com to send you by e-mail my outline of my book.
It is my pleasant duty to express gratitude to the Rev. Alan Freed, a Lutheran pastor by occupation before his retirement and a thinker by vocation, for his help in the writing of this column.
Lev Navrozov's (navlev@cloud9.net] new book is available on-line at www.levnavrozov.com. To request an outline of the book, send an e-mail to webmaster@levnavrozov.com.
“Lev,
“Keep the good stuff coming. You are the voice of reason in a wilderness of a world that has truly gone mad.
“Respectfully,
“Roger.”