Why 1906?

I’ve been fascinated by two major inflection points.

The more recent one, 1946, is not mysterious at all. After FDR died, Deepstate recaptured the territory it had lost, and started to obliterate the universe. UN, WHO, NSF, NIH, CDC, NSA, CIA. All the three-letter** demons were founded in 1946 with the same demonic purpose.

The earlier inflection is 1906. This is less precise and more mysterious. In every part of science and technology, true creativity more or less halted around 1906. Open minds started to close, and devotion to order and beauty started yielding to a love of chaos.

Here’s a specific example. I was looking back through my material on Oliver Lodge, one of the open thinkers of that era. I ran through the issue of Literary Digest where Lodge had passionately defended design against evolution.

The same volume included two incidental items. One of them came from Kansas, which caught my eye. Kansas had managed to kick out the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests, partly by threatening to open a state-owned refinery.

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The Topeka Daily Capital, supporting the project for a state refinery, frankly admits that it is a species of socialism, but it says that occasionally a monopoly becomes so oppressive and intolerant that it can only be reached by socialistic remedies. The Capital believes that a state refinery will restore competition in the oil industry of that State. It says: “With a refinery the State becomes a shipper and as such has the legal machinery to enforce its rights. In so doing it enforces the rights of all competitors as well, to reasonable and equal rates and prices.”

It may be said that if the State can avail itself of its own laws, so may private capital; but we come back to the point that private capital has surrendered the fight and has no faith in the effectiveness of the laws, with their technicalities and their delays. It is as a means of reviving private competition, clearing the way for the freedom of industry, that a state refinery appeals to the people and arouses the opposition of the trust.

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Remarkable in two ways. First, our hatred of “communism” (which was really our hatred of Russia) hadn’t yet been cultivated by Wilson and Lady Edgar. A major newspaper was able to suggest socialistic cures for capitalistic diseases. Second, the idea that the state can control monopolies best by competing with them has been forgotten. It wouldn’t apply to the federal government, because the feds necessarily become the ONLY force in any area they choose to monopolize. But it does apply to states and cities attempting to resist a national or global monopoly. A state has vastly more bully-power than a single small business. We saw this in 2020, when individuals and non-Bezos businesses were smashed by the Public Death Trust, while states with sane and gutsy governors were able to break out of the NAZI TORTURE.

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A second incidental piece helps to indicate why 1906 was the point where our REAL-WORLD practical thinking and education started yielding to bizarre theoretical nonsense.

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Kaiser Wilhelm recently directed Baron Speck von Sternberg, the German ambassador to the United States, to lay before President [Teddy] Roosevelt a suggestion for an exchange of professors between German and American universities. In this matter he seems to have been anticipated by action on the part of the universities themselves. According to newspaper despatches, Prof. Francis G Peaboody of Harvard has been chosen to lecture at the University of Berlin under an arrangement recently made between Harvard and Berlin.

Germans have especially been rich in investigators in every branch of learning and of science. More, perhaps, than in any other country, scholarship in its broadest sense has been in Germany a recognized career, with ample rewards of recognition for its devotees and with a singular self-respect among them and general respect for them quite independent of material wealth. Nowhere has the splendid fire of Prometheus been cherished and used more steadfastly or with higher devotion. Americans have drawn from that source much inspiration and received much aid and guidance. It is extremely gratifying to have practical testimony to the recognition of the fact that the relation of our scholars and of theirs is now one of common aims and of cooperation.

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At that time Kraut scholars were mainly devoted to tearing apart religion and art and philosophy. We chose to admire them and align ourselves with them, losing our own spirit of practical training and CONSTRUCTIVE experience in both art and science. We briefly “fought” them in 1918, then immediately returned to collaborating with Germany against Russia. Again we briefly “fought” them in 1942-1944, then immediately imported the worst of them to help us build our Deepstate demonscience against Russia.

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** Numerology footnote: UN was originally UNO, United Nations Organization. The allies in WW2 were often called The United Nations. The institution was an Organization to carry on the alliance.