I wouldn't. I don't think he knew anything about politics - at least, no more than any of us. I agree that he was pretty smart (even though he's been proven wrong by a few discoveries since his death, like quantum mechanics) but being really awesome at, say, cooking doesn't make you an expert at auto body repair. Two completely different subjects. I'm not sure why Einstein's achievements in physics have convinced anybody that he's a credible authority on anything else, but the whole 'Einstein said it, so it must be sage advice' thing is one of my pet peeves. It's like saying 'Hitler did X", where the implication is that "X" is something bad because Hitler did it. Well, Hitler also ate food; that doesn't make eating food bad.

Besides, half the quotes people pick up on the internet as being attributed to Einstein are misattributed anyway. As a beekeeper, when discussing a recent die-off of honey bees around the world, I was faced with an Einstein quote often - something along the lines of "If the honey bee were to vanish from the earth, the human race would become extinct within 2 (or however many) years." Firstly, Einstein never actually said anything like that, and secondly - even if he did, it's simply wrong.

No sir, not at all. Only that something said by Einstein about anything other than physics is no more likely to be true that something said by any one of us.

Hello All!

I talked with a soldier today who just got back from Iraq.

He told me that most of the soldiers are not happy with our

new president.

In addition to how they feel as soldiers, he also expressed his

personal opinion. He said " Obama thinks that he is God" If I

want to eat at McDonalds, I do not need a TAX on my burger

because the government feels that it is "not good for me"


He told me to take a look at these sites....

http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Alt/alt.politics/2008-10/msg03412.html

http://msplaceddemocrat.com/http:/msplaceddemocrat.com/soldier-doubts-obama-eligibility/

well....... i don't know if i'd go THAT far....... that's almost like saying anyone who does not have a formal degree in music is unworthy of being called a musician, and we all know that not true. why do we canonize certain personas as being 'ordained' [ excuse me, you have not been awarded a nobel peace prize, then shut the hell up!] and others who have not paid the piper are somehow disqualified as 'less than'?

what's really going on under the surface of that conversation is a lot of value judgment. yes, i can attest to the fact that elitism is what is driving those 'less than' to strive to be ' equal to' but what the hell is it accomplishing beyond causing us to spend spend spend more and more of our hard earned currency just to measure 'up' to some competitive benchmark standard.

ok, yea, i forgot for a moment.... it's all about survival of the fittest.... i think i'll shut up now, and yield to those who pander to the more worthy brainiacs whose opinions hold the power to just keep driving us closer and closer to the oblivion of culture shock.

.......now where was i......who knows....who cares.....?

I don't think that I defer to Albert Einstein on matters of the human experience out of route. I defer to an acknowledged and immense intellect who had a robust set of interests and spent a good deal of time thinking about ideas and the human condition. Einstein was just the one example I recalled at the moment. But I could easily have been deferrential to say, Galileo or Malcolm X, or Mother Theresa, Jesus, Elizabeth I of England, or - for that matter - my great grandmother who was a wise, kind, illiterate and a supreme success at being a human being. But you wouldn't have access to her public utterances or her published ideas. Sometimes using familiar references helps establish common ground when expressing oneself to strangers.

Quoting someone familiar in a context such as this forum allows the reader (who doesn't know me from Eve) to 1) look up what I've said to verify the context; and 2)rebut with authoritative information.

Coming back to me with "Einstein was a physicist not a political scientist" is not an argument against the point I was making that it is self-defeating and futile for any nation to say it is working towards peace while stockpiling nuclear or conventional weapons.

Einstein actually put his political views into action and advanced the notion that a supernational authority be created for the regulation of nuclear weapons (he and Bertrand Russell et al thought this up). Einstein realized his work was political, how could he not?

Scientific advances are ultimately political perhaps nowhere more so than in the US. Think about the recent debate on stem-cell research. Regardless of where any of us come down on the issue, it is clearly a political minefield.

C.