Petr Beckmann has used most of his life and his extraordinary abilities against tyranny. He told me last month that he was pleased to have lived to see the end of two great tyrannical political empires and the beginning of the end of a scientific one—the intuitively dissatisfying and artificially confining postulates of relativity.
Whether or not relativity has fallen will be debated for many years, but most would agree that Nazism and Communism have met well deserved, miserable ends. Petr Beckmann fought the Nazis and the Communists both physically and mentally. He helped to defeat them.
One wonders, however, whether or not the fundamental evils of great tyrannies ever really die. America defeated Hitler but not Fascism. Fascism—tyrannical control by central government over all aspects of private property including especially all industrial activity—is an economic system that today threatens to destroy America. It has become the defacto economic policy of the United States government. It is even promoted actively by many large corporations who see it as an easier way to eliminate their competition than the old-fashioned, free enterprise methods.
Communism is falling throughout the world, but the instabilities and frailties that allowed it to flourish are still there and still pose a great threat to our peace and security. Things have, however, improved. Three years ago, 30,000 nuclear weapons were being aimed at us by our enemies. Today, 30,000 nuclear weapons (perhaps somewhat fewer) are still aimed at us by our friends. If we keep sending money, they may remain our friends.
The fragmented Soviet empire is a socialist basket case that has a third-world economy. With the American economy itself in trouble, why are we shipping large amounts of resources to the former Soviets? We are not sending great amounts of money to the other socialist failures around the world. One reason that we are sending resources to the former Soviets is that their weapons are still a major military threat to our existence. We are still, therefore, under the oppression of Soviet tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson swore "eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Jefferson realized that the problem of tyranny is long lasting. Human beings are prone to this particular evil.
It may be that the only great empire that Petr Beckmann really saw end was the theory of relativity. If his analysis of physics proves to be correct, then relativity will eventually be completely gone. In science, the tyranny of an incorrect or inadequate idea can last for a long time. Once, however, an idea is shown to be wrong, it permanently passes away—from science, not necessarily from human affairs. Hillary and her two retainers, Bill and Al, remind us daily that truth need not be a consideration in politics.
Most of us would define "tyranny" in similar ways. Some words have, however, a way of spreading into usages that invert their meanings. In common usage, "liberal" now means its opposite and "environmentalism" now means, as Dixy Lee Ray has pointed out, trashing the planet for political power.
Perhaps some examples serve best as a definition. Tyranny is the suppression by force or threat of force of the peaceful aspirations and activities of human beings. Tyranny is the promulgation of a false idea or claim in order to gain dishonest mental control over the activities of human beings. Tyranny is the confiscation by force or threat of force of the life, liberty, or property of any person. Tyranny is practiced by governments, by social organizations, by writers, by individual criminals, and even by seemingly benevolent enterprises.
Petr Beckmann is today near death in a hospital room. There is a chance that he wt recover, but his experiences of the past few months (he wrote your last two issues of Access to Energy one sentence at a time between prolonged episodes of fatigue and pain) illustrate another sort of tyranny.
For two decades, the disciplines of science and engineering have been developed to such an advanced level that the early sufferings and deaths of human beings before the ages of 80 to 90 years (and perhaps as much as 100 to 110) have become entirely unnecessary. If the techniques already available to uswere properly utilized in research and application, this 69 year old man would have the appearance and vitality of a 50 year old and an expectancy of many, many years of healthful and productive life.
For two generations now, however, the dead hand of tyrannical governmental policy has confiscated the resources from our free society that would have funded medical progress and has then dribbled the resources back so polluted with controls and regulations that substantial progress has not been possible. Most of our great research institutions are now captives of governmental funding and controls as are the potentially productive people who work within them. This tyranny has caused more suffering and death than both World Wars.
Petr Beckmann's life has been a bane to tyranny. If each of uses the opportunities that his generation has preserved for us, then tyranny will become a lesser threat to human life.
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Vol. 21, No. 1
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 21, No. 1 Date: September 01, 1993 04:42 PM Title: Petr Beckman
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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