Minoru, Perhaps I misunderstood. Based on the subject line, I thought you were trying to make a point about understanding the US. I am still not certain what your post's argument is, and still have no idea what the link is to financial issues.
I do not think that the Jewish refugees (or someone like Fermi, a non-Jew but whose wife was Jewish) worked on the bomb to prove their pro-Americanism or out of some kind of status anxiety; they did it because they hated fascism, and were worried about what might happen if Hitler got the bomb first. And the worry was justified, even though the German project never got very far. I do think the history of the development of the A-bomb shows one thing conclusively: Countries that politicize science do so at their own risk. Hitler did that in Germany, and the end result was that Germany was severely hampered in its A-bomb project due to the loss of scientific brainpower to the US. And both the USSR (the Lysenko affair) and Maoist China politicized science and the academy, with similar disastrous results (though interestingly the Chinese A-bomb program was completely insulated from all ideological pressure and political interference). One would think that the US president would understand such a basic point, but apparently it is just one more thing lost on our current chief executive. Thank God he was not president in 1939. Had he been in office then, he would probably have turned Einstein's letter over to a Baptist preacher, and asked him to find scriptural evidence proving that the A-bomb is theologically unfeasible. John M. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Persons posting messages to not_honyaku assume all responsibility for their messages. The list owner does not review messages, and accepts no responsibility for the content of messages posted. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
