Listening to the news this morning, it occurred to me that a lot of bad decisions are being made because well-intending people are being given bad information. In other words, I don’t think the masses are as evil as an oligarchy of deceivers and instigators. Most kids want freedom, health, love, and fairness for all. The lie they are sold is they can achieve those ends with unjust retribution for alleged wrongs, via dissolving morals that dictate mutual respect, by calling the Constitution and its authors racist instead of reading it and seeing it as a tool to buck tyranny. In short, children and children-at-heart are so fast-paced, they’re replacing reason with something akin to believing it good for Godzilla to attack Tokyo as long as he’s wearing love beads.
I was asked over the weekend to explain to a group of young children what being a dissident physicist meant. That was tough. One answer that came to mind was that it is a path of scientific inquiry without hope of pecuniary compensation. I thought of comparing it to Martin Luther, who read the Bible and found things other than what the hipsters of the day said it contained. Some are dissidents as a fashion statement; others apply logic to evidence and wind up alone. It would be my wish that young hipsters read the Constitution, look past the 3/5 Compromise Clause which we have outgrown as a nation, and see if the checks and balances and separations of powers are not a good idea.
