The Constitution and what Kurt Godel foresaw.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

My BF found this in one of his recent purchases of "light reading" as we call it.



Subject: A prophetic insight


I found the following in my latest 1300 page doorstop, "God Created the Integers (All the rest is the work of Man)" - a history of mathematics edited by Stephen Hawking.

It's rather prophetic that an immigrant (Kurt Gödel) saw 60 years ago what had to be done a few months ago to stop "W" from making appointments without congressional approval:

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Einstein played a role in one of the strangest and most amusing incidents in Gödel’s life. Gödel became an American citizen in December 1947. He studied diligently for his hearing, much more diligently than necessary. The economist Oskar Morgenstern, one of his closest friends, noticed Gödel becoming more and more upset as the hearing date approached. Morgenstern simply thought that Gödel was nervous in anticipation of the hearing. A few days before the hearing Gödel confided to Morgenstern that he had found a serious flaw in the American Constitution. The President could fill vacancies without Senate approval while the Senate was in recess. This, Gödel reasoned, could lead to a dictatorship!

Morgenstern realized that he and Einstein needed to persuade Gödel that pursuing this point during his citizenship hearing might well jeopardize his chances of being granted citizenship. Einstein joined Morgenstern who drove Gödel to Trenton for the hearing. During the drive Gödel’s two friends tried to persuade him to stay away from this topic, but they failed. When Judge Phillip Forman asked Gödel, “Whether a dictatorship similar to the one in Germany could arise in the US?” Gödel, following his inclination to focus on the logical rather than the practical, answered in the affirmative and began to expound on the supposed flaw in the constitution. Fortunately for Gödel, Judge Forman, who had also presided at Einstein’s hearing, found Einstein’s presence to be a sufficient reference for Gödel, and quickly steered him to other topics.

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Darn! I was hoping for more details!

I had read this in another book a few months ago and was wondering just what it was Gödel had figured out.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

2. The president could appoint a dictator in the Cabinet, for example.

You didn't get it? Or make all his appointments during recesses, so that anybody who had to be approved by Congress would think exactly like him. Which is more or less what we have now.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. I was curious as to whether Gödel's idea was more subtle than Bu**sh**'s ...

one would certainly expect so.

edit: It looks like the version I read was almost verbatim the same, but with that explanatory sentence left out -- so I scanned it too quick and missed that. Thanks for posting the info.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

4. It took me a while, but....

I figured out what your handle means.

"Yet, it moves!"

What he supposedly said under his breath, when he signed his denunciation of the heliocentric solar system so he wouldn't get barbecued. Apocryphal story about Galileo.

Oh well, it took 'em long enough to apologize for that one and for barbecuing Giordano Bruno.

The first Unitarian was barbecued by a Protestant, John Calvin. Michael Servetus had The Inquisition, Calvin and Luther all after him.

And I LOOOOOVE studying Italian. I took Latin and Spanish in high school and love Romance languages in general.

[eppur_se_muova]

7. Well, I'm reasonably sure I misspelled it ... si not se ...

I used the Google to find the correct expression (since I don't actually know Italian) and thought I had it ... now I can't find where I got the wrong spelling, but that is the quote I was aiming for.

Given Bu**sh**'s outrageous attacks on science, and his substitution of faith for reason, that quote resonated strongly with me at the time, especially since I'm a professional scientist (or trying to be, in the worst job market for scientists in years).

[melody]

5. That was one of Godel's specialties - finding the self-negating object

And he always held that any sufficiently complex system would eventually contradict (or countermand) itself,
which is why we need safeguards over the system.

[whistle]

6. Has any president before Shrub taken advantage of the loophole and made such

...appointments without congress approval? If not, then * is indeed a tyrant

[jkshaw]

8. Wasn't Bolton such an appointment?

[whistle]

9. Bolton was a Shrub appointee but congress never approved him

...so his term ran out