Einstein: The “Person of the 20th century”
On January 3, 2000, Time Magazine named Albert Einstein PERSON OF THE CENTURY.
The tribute to Einstein began:
He was the pre-eminent scientist in a century dominated by science. The touchstones of the era — the Bomb, the Big Bang, quantum physics and electronics — all bear his imprint.
He was the embodiment of pure intellect, the bumbling professor with the German accent, a comic cliché in a thousand films. Instantly recognizable, like Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp, Albert Einstein's shaggy-haired visage was as familiar to ordinary people as to the matrons who fluttered about him in salons from Berlin to Hollywood. Yet he was unfathomably profound — the genius among geniuses who discovered, merely by thinking about it, that the universe was not as it seemed…
Following World War II, Einstein became even more outspoken. Besides campaigning for a ban on nuclear weaponry, he denounced McCarthyism and pleaded for an end to bigotry and racism. Coming as they did at the height of the cold war, the haloed professor's pronouncements seemed well meaning if naive; Life magazine listed Einstein as one of this country's 50 prominent "dupes and fellow travelers." He had a straight moral sense that others could not always see-even other moral people.
Harvard physicist and historian Gerald Holton added,
"If Einstein's ideas are really naive, the world is really in pretty bad shape." Holton continued saying it seemed to him that Einstein's humane and democratic instincts were an ideal political model for the 21st century, embodying the very best of this century (the 20th) as well as our highest hopes for the next. What more could we ask of a man to personify the past 100 years?”
Einstein knew our world was in pretty bad shape.
He and Adolph Hitler had been protagonists from the 1930s to the end of World War II. Senator Joseph McCarthy launched his anti-Communist vendetta in the 1950s. McCarthy had many Professors and friends of Einstein fired, but he was afraid to tackle Einstein directly. Instead he assigned his agents to never let Einstein out of sight and keep a record of everything they heard.
Fred Jerome obtained the McCarthy accusations and wrote a book titled The Einstein File that included FBI’s 1,850-pages of derogatory information on Einstein as a “security threat.”
The first one I read was the following memo from the Woman Patriot Corporation:
This alien, more extensively and more potently than any other revolutionist on earth, promotes confusion and disorder, doubt and disbelief….has promoted lawlessness and confusion to shatter the Church as well as the State—and to leave, if possible, even the laws of nature and the principles of science in confusion and disorder…He is affiliated with more anarchist and communist groups than Joseph Stalin himself. (He) apparently cannot talk English.
Were Hitler’s Ghost and Einstein’s Ghost Vying for the Human Soul? Yes they were!
From the end of the 2nd World War to “End all War” until Einstein’s death April 18, 1955 he continued his campaign against Hitler’s ghost. Hitler took his own life when Germany was defeated, but Einstein knew that the “Hitler-logic” that came close to engulfing the entire world, was far from dead.
There was no doubt that Hitler’s ghost might reach up out from his tomb to accomplish what he couldn’t do while alive. That possibility was making its ugly head obvious in the 21st century.
After the war the subversive sickness that characterized the Nazi way of thinking spread like a deadly virus through the United States and the world. This virus of violence transformed the Allies who had defeated the Nazi war machine into enemies.
The seed of Hitler’s genius for corrupting language continued to bear fruit. It spread like a poisonous vine that flowered and scattered more seeds wherever the soil of greed and hatred was fertile.
The brief promise of hope that blossomed with victory soon faded. The vision of an age in which science and technology would transform the war machine into a peaceful “civilized” civilization was stillborn.
As dangerous as the madman Hitler had been while alive, Einstein understood that Hitler would be even more dangerous as a ghost. While serving as honorary president and a fund-raiser for the state of Israel (before Israel was a state), Einstein warned that the Jewish community in Palestine would be no more immune to the Hitler “logic” than anyone else.
Einstein sought to communicate directly to the “consciousness and conscience” of individual humans at a species level. None of us were immune to the hypnotic spell of violence. Each of us would have to free our “selves” from what Einstein called our “delusion of consciousness.”
The delusion was a distorted dream of reality inherited from ancestors and passed on to our children. Each new generation forfeited the unique freedom that was the hallmark of humanity. According to Einstein, humans were caught in a vicious cycle. The cycle continued because we taught our children old modes of thinking.
The old modes were obsolete ways of thinking stuck at a surface level of reality. They perpetuated narrow political, economic, religious, and scientific beliefs about reality. Stuck at a surface level of reality, we learned a “logic” that divided us from our authentic human selves—a logic that enmeshed us in a “world of greed and hatred.”
Every nation, every society, every culture in modern scientific industrial civilization was trapped in the same dilemma. The trap was the ancient paradox of the “Real People Dilemma.” Einstein believed human consciousness and conscience were our guardians of freedom. Freedom was the essential requirement for his ideal of democracy. Democracy could not be confined to any political or economic system. That way of thinking was the very seed that had spawned the virus of violence.
The thinking that gave birth to democratic institutions has much deeper roots. Democracy at a species level of thinking was more a dimension of freedom than an idea conceived by humans. Freedom, in this sense, was an emerging dimension of Universe reality. Just as Matter and Spirit, Atoms and Cells were emerging dimensions of Universe reality.
Before thoughts about democracy could be entertained by humans, the freedom dimension of reality had to evolve for billions of years. Beginning with the first atoms of Hydrogen and Helium, a sequence of breakthroughs to higher levels of complexity and diversity would prepare the way for a radical experiment on a planet like Earth in which a species like humans could be given a future with a real Free Choice.
When Free Choice is Real, it will be a Great Gamble. The Gamble will be epitomized in the 21st century by the Choices humans will be required to make. Conscious or Unconscious, we will choose between two Ghosts from the 20th century vying for the Human Soul.
Einstein’s ideas and opinions in his own words
Einstein believed that the biggest mistake America could ever make was to drop the atomic bomb on a Japanese city. General Dwight Eisenhower agreed heartedly with Einstein.
President Truman and his Cabinet ignored Einstein’s plea to demonstrate the bomb’s catastrophe power in a place where there would be no human casualties. Einstein believed such a demonstration could convince the world that war in the Nuclear Age was obsolete. This would be a step toward a New Way of Thinking we would have to master to avoid Unparalleled Catastrophe.
In Eisenhower’s book The White House Years: Mandate for Change: 1953-1956: A Personal Account, Eisenhower recalls the “sense of depression” he felt as he listened to members of President Truman’s cabinet discuss Dropping the Bomb. He expressed his “Grave Misgivings.”
He told the cabinet members: “Japan was already defeated…and our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was no longer mandatory to save American lives. lives.
Dismayed by the unprecedented death toll of civilians when America bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Einstein sought to analyze the “logic” that led to what he believed was a tragic mistake. For the rest of his career as a scientist he proposed alternatives to the self-destructive mindset he believed obsessed world leaders—leaders who he said possessed the power to make decisions for good or for evil. Good or evil for the entire human species.
He wrote volumes on this subject.
While Einstein’s scientific thinking radically transformed the science curriculum of educational institutions around the world, his social and moral thinking was totally ignored by academia.
Following are samples of Einstein’s thinking on social and moral issues.
In 1918 Einstein, sounding much like an ancient Hebrew prophet, addressed the Physical Society in Berlin on the occasion of his friend Max Planck’s 60th birthday:
In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on the altar of purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of the Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still be some men, of both present and past times, left inside. Our Planck is one of them, and that is why we love him.
I am quite aware that we have just now light-heartedly expelled in imagination many excellent men who are largely, perhaps chiefly, responsible for building of the temple of science; and in many cases our angel would find it a pretty ticklish job to decide. But of one thing I feel sure: if the types we have just expelled were the only types there were, the temple would never have come to be, any more than a forest can grow which consists of nothing but creepers. For these people any sphere of human activity will do, if it comes to a point; whether they become engineers, officers, tradesmen, or scientists depends on circumstances.
Now let us have another look at those who have found favor with the angel. Most of them are somewhat odd, uncommunicative, solitary fellows, really less like each other, in spite of these common characteristics, than the hosts of the rejected. What brought them to the temple?
Einstein wrote on this subject in the New York Times on October 5, 1952:
It is not enough to teach man a specialty. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise he—with his specialized knowledge—more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow-men and to the community.
Overemphasis on the competitive system and premature specialization on the ground of immediate usefulness kill the spirit on which all cultural life depends, specialized knowledge included… It is also vital to a valuable education that independent critical thinking be developed in the young human being, a development that is greatly jeopardized by overburdening him with too much and with too varied subjects (point system). Overburdening necessarily leads to superficiality. Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not a hard duty.
This is from a speech in Albany, NY on the occasion of the celebration of the tercentenary of higher education in America, October 15, 1936:
Sometimes one sees in the school simply the instrument for transferring a certain maximum quantity of knowledge to the growing generation. But that is not right. Knowledge is dead; the school, however, serves the living.
To me the worst thing seems to be for a school principally to work with methods of fear, force, and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity, and the self-confidence of the pupil. It produces the submissive subject. It is no wonder that such schools are the rule in Germany and Russia... Give into the power of the teacher the fewest possible coercive measures, so that the only source of the pupil’s respect for the teacher is the human and intellectual qualities of the later…
Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger, or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may become injurious for the individual and the community…Therefore one should guard against preaching success in the customary sense as the aim of life…
The following are from talks given by Einstein from 1920 to 1933 and published in 1934: Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam, Querido Verlag:
WORKING PALESTINE: Among Zionist organizations “Working Palestine” is the one whose work is of most direct benefit to the most valuable class of people living there, namely, those who are transforming deserts into flourishing settlements by the labor of their hands…They are not ignorant laborers who sell the labor of their hands to the highest bidder, but educated intellectually vigorous, free men, from whose peaceful struggle with the neglected soil of the whole Jewish nation are the gainers, directly and indirectly…
It is, moreover, this working class alone that has the power to establish healthy relations with the Arabs, which is the most important political task of Zionism. Administrations come and co; but it is human relations that finally tune the scale in the lives of nations….
The community in Palestine must approach the social ideal of our forefathers as it is laid down in the Bible, and at the same time become a seat of modern intellectual life, a spiritual center for the Jews of the whole world. In accordance with this notion, the establishment of a Jewish university in Jerusalem constitutes one of the most important aims of the Zionist organization.
IS THERE A JEWISH POINT OF VIEW? Judaism seems to me to be concerned almost exclusively with the moral attitude in life and to life. I look upon it as the essence of an attitude to life which is incarnate in the Jewish people rather than the essence of the laws laid down in the Torah and interpreted in the Talmud… The essence of that conception seems to me to lie in an affirmative attitude to the life of all creation. The life of the individual only has meaning in so far as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful. Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate…
The Jewish tradition also contains something else, something which finds splendid expression in many of the Psalms, namely, a sort of intoxicated joy and amazement at the beauty and grandeur of this world, of which man can form just a faint notion. This joy is the feeling from which true scientific research draws its spiritual sustenance, but which also seems to find expression in the song of birds….
CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM: If one purges Judaism and the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity.
It is the duty of every man of good will to strive steadfastly in his own little world to make this teaching of pure humanity a living force, so far as he can. If he makes an honest attempt in this direction without being crushed and trampled underfoot by his contemporaries, he may consider himself and the community to which he belongs lucky.
LETTER TO AN ARAB: Your letter has given me great pleasure. It shows me that there is good will available on your side, too, for solving the present difficulties in a manner worthy of both our nations. I believe that these difficulties are more psychological than real, and that they can be got over if both sides bring honesty and good will to the task…
I will tell you how I think the present difficulties might be remedied; at the same time I must add that this is only my personal opinion, which I have discussed with nobody….
A Privy Council is to be formed to which the Jews and Arabs shall each send four representatives, who must be independent of all political parties:
Each group to be composed as follows:
A doctor, elected by the Medical Association.
A lawyer, elected by the lawyers.
A working men’s representative, elected by the trade unions.
An ecclesiastic, elected by the ecclesiastics.
These eight people are to meet once a week. They undertake not to espouse the sectional interests of their professions or nation but conscientiously and to the best of their power to aim at the welfare of the whole population of the country. Their deliberations shall be secret and they are strictly forbidden to give any information about them, even in private. When a decision has been reached on any subject in which not less than three members on each side concur, it may be published, but only in the name of the whole Council. If a member dissents he may retire from the Council, but he is not thereby released from the obligation of privacy. If one of the elective bodies above specified is dissatisfied with a resolution of the Council, it may replace its representative by another.
Even if the Privy Council has no definite powers, it may nevertheless bring about the gradual composition of differences, and secure a united representation of the common interests of the country before the mandatory power, clear of the dust of ephemeral politics.
Our Debt to Zionism, an address April 28, 1938 on the occasion of the celebration of the “Third Seder” by the National Labor Committee for Palestine, at the Commodore Hotel, New York City:
We meet today because of our concern for the development of Palestine…The Zionist movement has revived among Jews the sense of community. It has performed productive work surpassing all the expectations anyone could entertain…In particular, it has been possible to lead a not inconsiderable part of our youth toward a life of joyous and creative work…Now the fateful disease of our time—exaggerated nationalism, borne up by blind hatred—has brought our work in Palestine to a most difficult stage. Fields cultivated by day must have armed protection at night against fanatical Arab outlaws. All economic life suffers from insecurity…Everyone knows that banditry would cease if foreign subsidies were withdrawn….
Just one more personal word on the question of partition. I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. Apart from practical consideration, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain—especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state. We are no longer the Jews of the Maccabee period. A return to a nation in the political sense of the world would be the equivalent to turning away from the spiritualization of our community which we owe to the genius of our prophets. If external necessity should after all compel us to assume this burden, let us bear it with tact and patience.
Radio address broadcast March 22, 1939 for the United Jewish Appeal:
The history of the persecutions which the Jewish people have had to suffer is almost inconceivably long. Yet the war that is being waged against us in Central Europe today falls into a special category of its own. In the past we were persecuted despite the fact that we were the people of the Bible; today, however, it is just because we are the people of the Book that we are persecuted. The aim is to exterminate not only ourselves but to destroy, together with us, that spirit expressed in the Bible and in Christianity which made possible the rise of civilization in Central and Northern Europe. If this aim is achieved, life cannot long endure on a basis of crude force, brutality, terror, and hate.
Only understanding for our neighbors, justice in our dealings, and willingness to help our fellow men can give human society permanence and assure security for the individual. Neither intelligence, nor inventions nor institutions can serve as substitutes for these most vital parts of education.
“The War Is Won, But The Peace Is Not: address on the occasion of the Fifth Nobel Anniversary Dinner at the Hotel Astor in New York, December 10, 1945:
The world was promised freedom from fear, but in fact fear has increased tremendously since the termination of the war. The world was promised freedom from want, but large parts of the world are faced with starvation while others are living in abundance. The nations promised liberation and justice. But we have witnessed, and are witnessing even now, the sad spectacle of “liberating” armies firing into populations who want their independence and social equality, and supporting in those countries, by force of arms, such parties and personalities as appear to be most suited to serve vested interests…
So long as Nazi violence was unleashed only, or mainly, against Jews, the rest of the world looked on passively, and even treaties and agreements were made with the patently criminal government of the Third Reich. Later when Hitler was on the point of taking over Rumania and Hungary, at the time when Maidnek and Oswiecim were in Allied hands, and the methods of the gas chambers were well known all over the world, all attempts to rescue the Rumanian and Hungarian Jews came to naught because the doors of Palestine were closed to Jewish immigrants by the British government, and no country could be found that would admit those forsaken people. They were left to perish like their brothers and sisters in the occupied countries.
We shall never forget the heroic efforts of the small countries of the Scandinavian, the Dutch, the Swiss nations, and the individuals in the occupied parts of Europe who did all in their power to protect Jewish lives. We do not forget the humane attitude of the Soviet Union who was the only one among the big powers to open her doors to hundreds of thousands of Jews when the Nazi armies were advancing in Poland.
Symptoms of Cultural Decay: written for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Vol. VIII, No. 7, October, 1952:
The free, unhampered exchange of ideas and scientific conclusions is necessary for the sound development of science, as it is in all spheres of cultural life. In my opinion, there can be no doubt that the intervention of political authorities of country in the free exchange of knowledge between individuals has already had significant damaging effects….
Interference with the freedom of the oral and written communication of scientific results, the widespread attitude of political distrust which is supported by an immense police organization, the timidly and the anxiety of individuals to avoid everything which might cause suspicion and which could threaten their economic position—all these are only symptoms, even though they reveal more clearly the threatening character of the illness.
The real ailment, however, seems to me to lie in the attitude which was created by the World War and which dominates all our actions; namely, the belief that we must in peacetime so organize our whole life and work that in the event of war we would be sure of victory. This attitude gives rise to the belief that one’s freedom and indeed one’s existence are threatened by powerful enemies.
This attitude explains all of the unpleasant facts which we have designated above as symptoms. It must, if it does not rectify itself, lead to war and to very far-reaching destruction. It finds its expression in the budget of the United States.
Only if we overcome this obsession can we really turn our attention in a reasonable way to the real political problem, which is, “How can we contribute to make the life of man on this diminishing earth more secure and more tolerable?”
It will be impossible to cure ourselves…if we do not overcome the deeper ailment which is affecting us
YOUNG EINSTEIN JOINED THE PRUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE:
Inaugural address to the Prussian Academy of Sciences 1914:
First of all, I have to thank you most heartily for conferring the greatest benefit on me that anybody can confer on a man like myself. By electing me to your Academy you have freed me from the distractions and cares of a professional life and so make it possible for me to devote myself entirely to scientific studies.
Einstein’s Manifesto issued 19 years later in March, 1933 after Hitler’s rise to power—and Einstein resigned from the Prussian Academy of Sciences:
I do not wish to live in a country where the individual does not enjoy equality before the law, and freedom of speech and teaching…I call upon all sensible people, who are still faithful to the ideals of civilization in peril, to do their utmost to prevent this mass-psychosis, which manifests itself in such terrible symptoms in Germany today, from spreading any further….Any social organism can become psychically-distempered just as any individual can, especially in time of difficulty.
The Academy’s Declaration of April 1, 1933 Against Einstein was issued to the press by Prof. Dr. Ernst Heymann, Perpetual Secretary for the Prussian Academy of Sciences. It stated:
The Prussian Academy of Sciences heard with indignation from the newspapers of Albert Einstein’s participation in the atrocity-mongering in France and America. It immediately demanded an explanation. In the meantime Einstein has announced his withdrawal from the Academy, giving as his reason that he cannot continue to serve the Prussian state under its present government…The Prussian Academy of Sciences is particularly distressed by Einstein’s activities as an agitator in foreign countries, as it and its members have always felt themselves bound by the closest ties to the Prussian state and, while abstaining strictly from all political partisanship, have always stressed and remained faithful to the national idea. It has therefore no reason to regret Einstein’s withdrawal.
Were Hitler’s Ghost and Einstein’s Ghost Vying for the Human Soul?
Adolph Hitler and Albert Einstein were protagonists from the 1930s to the end of World War II.
From the end of the war until Einstein’s death April 18, 1955 he continued his campaign against Hitler’s ghost. Hitler took his own life when Germany was defeated. But Einstein knew that the “Hitler-logic,” which came close to engulfing the entire world, was far from dead.
After the war the subversive sickness that characterized the Nazi way of thinking spread like a deadly virus through the United States and the world. This virus of violence transformed Allies who had defeated the Nazi war machine into enemies. The seed of Hitler’s genius for corrupting language continued to bear fruit. It spread like a poisonous vine scattered more seeds wherever the soil of greed and hatred was fertile.
The brief promise of hope that blossomed with the victory soon faded. The vision of an age in which science and technology would transform the war machine into a peaceful “civilized” civilization was stillborn. As dangerous as the madman Hitler had been while alive, Einstein understood that Hitler would be even more dangerous as a ghost.
While serving as honorary president and major fund-raiser for the state of Israel (before Israel was a state), Einstein warned that the Jewish community in Palestine would be no more immune to the Hitler “logic” than anyone else.
Einstein sought to communicate directly to the “consciousness and conscience” of individual humans at a species level. None of us were immune to the hypnotic spell of violence. Each of us would have to free our “selves” from what Einstein called our “delusion of consciousness.”
The delusion was a distorted dream of reality inherited from ancestors and passed on to our children. Each new generation forfeited the unique freedom that was the hallmark of humanity. According to Einstein, humans were caught in a vicious cycle. The cycle continued because we taught our children old modes of thinking.
The old modes were obsolete ways of thinking stuck at a surface level of reality. They perpetuated narrow political, economic, religious, and scientific beliefs about reality. Stuck at a surface level of reality, we learned a “logic” that divided us from our authentic human selves—a logic that enmeshed us in a “world of greed and hatred.”
Every nation, every society, every culture in modern scientific industrial civilization was trapped in the same dilemma. The trap was the ancient paradox of the “Real People Dilemma.” Einstein believed human consciousness and conscience were our guardians of freedom. Freedom was the essential requirement for his ideal of democracy. Democracy could not be confined to any political or economic system. That way of thinking was the seed that spawned the virus of violence.
The thinking that gave birth to democratic institutions has much deeper roots. Democracy at a species level of thinking was more a dimension of freedom than an idea conceived by humans. Freedom, in this sense, was an emerging dimension of Universe reality. Just as matter and spirit, atoms and cells were emerging dimensions of Universe reality.
Before thoughts about democracy could be entertained by humans, the freedom dimension of reality had to evolve for billions of years. Beginning with the first atoms of Hydrogen and Helium, a sequence of breakthroughs to higher levels of complexity and diversity would prepare the way for a radical experiment on a planet like Earth in which a species like humans could be given free choice.
If free choice were real it would be a Great Gamble. The gamble would be epitomized in the 21st century by a choice humans would be required to make. We would be choosing between two ghosts from the 20th century vying for the human soul.
Einstein’s ideas and opinions in his own words.
Einstein had believed that the biggest mistake America could ever make would be to drop the atomic bomb on a Japanese city. So did General Dwight Eisenhower agreed with Einstein, but President Truman and his cabinet ignored Einstein’s plea to demonstrate the bomb’s catastrophe power in a place where there would be no human casualties. Einstein thought such a demonstration could convince the world that war in the nuclear age was obsolete. This would be a step toward the new way of thinking we would have to master to avoid unparalleled catastrophe.
In Eisenhower book The White House Years: Mandate for Change: 1953-1956: A Personal Account, he recalled the “sense of depression” he felt as he listened to members of President Truman’s Cabinet discuss dropping the bomb. He and Einstein both shared the same “grave misgivings.”
He told Truman’s Cabinet members that “Japan was already defeated…and our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.”
Einstein was miserably depressed by the death toll of civilians when Americans bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which was the center for Christians in Japan. He believed there was no “logic” to a Tragic Mistake for the human species. For the rest of his career as a scientist he proposed alternatives to the self-destructive mindset that obsessed our world leaders. In his last years he wrote volumes on this subject.
Harvard physicist and historian Gerald Holden believed Einstein’s Humane and Democratic instincts were the ideal political model for the 21st century. There is no question that it was, but it was ignored.