Lunacy can grip America, but it passes - Einstein's insight in 1954

Albert Einstein was as slow to understand the American polity as he was brilliant at physics. But just before his death he wrote to his son Hans Albert: "God's own country becomes stranger and stranger... but somehow they manage to return to normality. Everything, even lunacy, is mass produced here. But everything goes out of fashion very quickly." (Unfinished letter dated 1954-12-28)

This from the brilliant biography by Walter Isaacson:

"Einstein (at age 75) had finally discovered what was fundamental about America: it can be swept by waves of what may seem, to outsiders, to be dangerous political passions but are, instead, passing sentiments that are absorbed by its democracy and righted by its constitutional gyroscope. McCarthyism (that greatly upset Einstein) had died down, and Eisenhower had proved a calming influence..."

- Walter Isaacson "Einstein: His Life and Universe" Simon & Schuster 2007, p537.

TOLLROADSnews 2008-06-18