Dakota Beacon

A book review by Lynn Bergman

Albert Einstein

Ambitious Germans of Jewish descent, Hermann Einstein and his brother Jacob ran a small company involved in electrifying southern Germany. A son. Albert, was born to Hermann and Pauline Einstein on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Germany. Shortly, they moved to Munich.

Imperial Germany

Imperial Germany, newly forged from twenty-five principalities and kingdoms, had won the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. There were few legal restrictions on Jews but plenty of antisemitic boundaries. Accordingly, the Einsteins embraced German secular culture to better assimilate into society. German education was more focused on duty than love. The Catholic school nearest the home of the Einsteins was highly disciplined and militaristic. Albert, at age eleven, became observant of Catholicism (neither stimulated or supported by his Jewish parents) for a year or so. He subsequently became enthralled with Euclid’s classic “Elements,” the foundation of two thousand years of European mathematical education. Like all German men, after graduation he faced mandatory service in the army. At age 15, Albert convinced a family friend to diagnose him with “neurasthenic exhaustion” (an overworked brain and exhausted nervous system), used it to secure dismissal from his high school before graduation, and gave up his German citizenship. After an initial entrance exam failure and a subsequent year of study, he entered the Federal Swiss Polytechnic (called the “ETH” in German) in Zurich, Switzerland (it did not require a high school diploma). He graduated in 1901 at age 22. He also secured Swiss citizenship.

Albert’s First Marriage

Einstein did not like alcohol and declined the beer that was often served. He enjoyed playing music, reading, and debating philosophy with friends. The young Einstein was a Bohemian, unconventional in his thinking. His first love, Mileva Maric’, a pioneering woman studying physics at ETH, came from a Serbian family in Hungary. Mileva became pregnant out of wedlock and went to Novi Sad, Serbia to deliver their daughter Lieserl, whom Einstein never met. Lieserl contracted Scarlett Fever and either died or was given up for adoption or taken in by a family member. Despite these events, Albert and Mileva were married in a civil ceremony on January 6, 1903 in Zurich. Albert’s first job was as a Technical Expert III Class at the Swiss patent office in Bern, Switzerland where they moved in summer 1903. Considering his disgust at the Kaiser’s army, he amazingly reported for a physical for military service in Switzerland. His varicose veins and flat feet marked him unfit for Swiss military service and he was annually charged a small fee to compensate… which he dutifully sent in for the rest of his life.

Their first son, Hans Albert, was born in 1904 in Bern, Switzerland.

Professorship of Theoretical Physics – University of Zurich

A close friend, Friedrich Adler, competed with Einstein for the position, lived in the same apartment building, and their families were friendly. Both later opposed the war publicly. When Einstein left to take a position in Prague (see below), he had hoped that Adler would replace him. Instead, Adler became a full-time radical socialist, even meeting Trotsky later in 1914. Adler opposed the war by shooting the prime minister of Austria and subsequently spent time in prison. Einstein wrote to a friend about his selection in 1909, “So now I am an official of the guild of whores.” Their second son, Eduard, nicknamed “Tete,” arrived in July, 1910.

Full Professor – German University in Prague

Prague was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When Einstein took an oath of allegiance, he was first required to declare a religious denomination. He tried to say none but that being unacceptable, he formally identified as a Jew. He liked to joke that the Emperor had made him Jewish. So ultimately, blood ran thicker than water for Albert, despite his Catholic school upbringing.

Back to Zurich

Einstein’s constantly elevating status among physicists led to job offers from the University if Utrecht in The Netherlands and, again, from Zurich. He moved back to Zurich in 1911.

Treacherous Geopolitical Alliances

Britain, France, and Russia had formed the Triple Entente in 1907 to counteract the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria – Hungary, Italy, and Germany. The inclusion of despotic Russia with Europe’s two great democracies made many uncomfortable in Europe. Austria-Hungary had occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1878 and formally annexed them in 1908. Russia saw itself as the traditional “protectors” of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia’s Eastern Orthodox Christian population identified with Russia. Serbians must have been afraid that they would also be annexed to Austria-Hungary.

The Austrian heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated in Sarajevo, the provincial capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, on June 28, 1914, by a Bosnian Serb student and two collaborators. This ultimately led to the World War to follow.

Post-War German Politics

The armistice agreement ending the World War was signed on November11, 1918. Einstein’s friends at the BNV (New Fatherland League, under 200 people of all political stripes who opposed the World War) organized a mass demonstration at the Reichstag, which was dispersed by machine gun fire. The streets of Berlin were filled with crowds… and competing revolutionary groups began maneuvering for influence. The revolutionary example to the east was on everyone’s minds – would Germany go the way of Soviet Russia? The sudden shift of politics leftward was a great boon for Einstein; he was not a communist, but he was a socialist, and that was suddenly a badge of honor. His academic colleagues, with their monarchist politics, hoped that he could help defend them against the new provisional government. Einstein stated “I am enjoying the reputation of an irreproachable socialist; as a consequence, yesterday’s heroes are coming fawningly to me in the opinion that I could break their fall into emptiness. Funny world!”

The monarchy gone, a student council at the university took some professors and the university chancellor prisoner. As a reputable socialist, Einstein was asked to negotiate with the students to free the academics. He took the students to task for threatening academic freedom but resisted the suggestion of some of his friends that a new intellectual aristocracy should run the nation. He thought that Democracy was the only way forward. A few days later, the professors and staff at the university declared their support for the new republic and repudiated the Student Council for its Communist leanings.

On November 16, Einstein attended the founding meeting of the Democratic People’s Union, a new organization promoted by Walter Rathenau as dedicated to free elections. Rathenau became the foreign minister for the Weimar Republic. He was assassinated by anti-Semitic terrorists who thought Jews and leftists had cause Germany to lose the war. This galvanized Einstein’s support for Zionism and his own Jewish identity, which changed his life forever.

We may thus surmise that Einstein’s politics were very similar to current “Democratic Socialists” such as Bernie Sanders, those that the Communists (according to their manifesto) “could work with.”

What is “Science”?

An idea is scientific if it is “falsifiable”… if it can be proven wrong (usually by an experiment). Science is not about proving good ideas to be true; it is about proving bad ideas wrong. By eliminating all the inadequate ideas, scientists gradually get better and better understanding of the world. “Falsificationism”, as it is called, is extremely widespread among the people who actually perform science. It is the brainchild of the Austrian-born philosopher Karl Popper, one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century.

Born in 1902, Popper was too young to get caught up in the fighting of WWI, but old enough to see the war’s injustices. That drove him to be a Marxist by age 15. What struck Popper was Einstein’s “intellectual modesty” – that the physicist had specified the conditions under which “relativity” could be refuted. No gravitational redshift, no relativity. No deflection of light due to gravity, no relativity. This combination of boldness (these are my predictions; go check them) and tentativeness (my theory is only provisional and can be proven wrong at any time) enormously impressed Popper.

Concentrating on evidence FOR a theory, as Marxists, Freudians, Climate Alarmists, Identity Politicians, Gender Radicals, and most journalists and biologists do, inevitably leads one to only look for (and only see) what you want to see, rather than what is reality. That marks such endeavors as pseudoscience instead of true science. The ability to falsify a theory is how one finds the boundary of the science (what philosophers call the demarcation problem). So-called “scientific grant” money that is doled out to such pseudoscientists comes from government use of taxpayer funds, the printing of money, and the robbing of future generations. Nevertheless, the lines for grant requests are not just long but seemingly infinite.

I strongly recommend this book for a deep dive into the most famous physicist in world history; you will be amazed, astounded and best of all, educated as to his life’s work.

Is the USA a “Democracy” or is it a “Republic”?

A Republic or a Monarchy? Benjamin Franklin famously answered, “A Republic… if you can keep it.” The founders had examined pure democracy and rejected such “rule of the majority.” If you are confused about what we have in the United States of America… it is a Republic. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands.

By definition, a republic is a representative form of government that is ruled according to its charter, or constitution, and a democracy is a government that is ruled according to the will of the majority. Although these forms of government are often confused, they are quite different. The main difference between a republic and a democracy is the charter or constitution that limits power in a republic, often to protect the individual’s rights against the desires of the majority.

Are threats to the USA “Threats to Democracy”?

Why all the emphasis by leftist activists, politicians, education, media, globalists and their “captured” institutions (i.e. Columbia, other Ivy League Universities, many institutions of higher education, etc.) on so-called “treats to democracy? Why the insistence in referring to our country as a “democracy” rather than as a “republic”? Is it merely because the “Democrat” party name is so similar and “name recognition” is the dominant factor chosen by citizens when voting? Or do Democrats and their followers secretly wish that when they have the majority they could rule without concern for the minority? Do Democrats and their followers secretly wish they were the ONLY party on every ballot? Only individual Democrats and their followers can answer this question and only for themselves.

Perhaps the answer lies in the name “Peoples Republic of China” to describe Communist China. Only the Chinese Communist Party or CCP is on the ballot. Communist China has “one party rule.” No other parties, especially minority parties, are to be found on the ballot. Yet the CCP calls China a “republic”? Is the inclusion of the word “republic” in communist country names done purposefully to deceive the voters? Yes, it is! Only members of the CCP enjoy fully the fruits of China’s economic efforts. CCP members of The National People’s Congress only concern themselves with assigning leadership positions toward governing to retaining power.

Layman’s partial explanation of Einstein’s theory of relativity: Energy from the sun’s rays is converted through the process of photosynthesis to plant growth matter. Conversely, we burn plant growth matter to create heat energy. So, Energy and Matter are convertible to one other. And light can be “bent” by planetary forces of gravity so light has properties of both energy and matter.

Love = Work + Courage