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Prof. Norman Rasmussen vs. Prof. Henry Kendall, April 8. 1979
Prof. Rasmussen (head of MIT’s Dept. of Nuclear Engineering):
“ Despite the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, nuclear power is the cleanest and most efficient form of energy available and should remain a key component of the U.S. energy picture.
“No new energy discovery will result in a sudden solution to the electricity supply problem. Even with a full commitment to alternative energy sources like solar, geothermal, and nuclear fusion, the implementation and commercial use of these technologies is 25 years away. The safety record of the nuclear industry is outstanding, and industry can learn from Three Mile Island and prevent similar incidents in the future. With the myriad different uses and demands for energy today, it is unrealistic to expect the United States could get along with less power in the future than in currently consumes. Forcing industries to curtail its consumption of power could cause more unemployment and an adverse ripple effect on the economy. If we wait for a no-risk solution to the energy problem we’ll surely get no solution at all.”
Prof. Henry Kendall:
“Industry and government are recklessly promoting nuclear growth at the expense of safety and, unless this course is reversed, nuclear accidents like Three Mile Island will occur every year or two.
“Three Mile Island was a near brush with catastrophe. The risks of nuclear power are unacceptable. Government and industry have concealed and misrepresented the risk of nuclear power and delayed the implementation of safety programs. The government has violated the public trust in the question of nuclear power.
“We need nuclear programs that are above suspicion; all nuclear plants around the country should be reinspected and, in some cases, shut down in order to be retrofitted for safety.”
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Bella Abzug, October 23, 1977
“America is the greatest democracy in the world, but we began as a flawed democracy. The Constitution provides for the inalienable rights of men. The cure for the injustices women have suffered under this flawed system is the women’s movement.
“Women never had any rights. Our forefathers didn’t give a hoot about our foremothers. American history is a charter for the America women’s commitment to human rights. Anita Bryant has no respect for any rights at all and Phyllis Schafly is a housewife who is never in the house.
“Being a homemaker isn’t bad, so long as there’s a choice. I like the work ‘homemaker’ because ‘housewife’ implies there’s a wife somewhere else.
“Our children’s children will be amazed to learn that women were once denied control of themselves and their bodies. By 1985, the last year of the United Nations’ proclaimed decade for women, everything will be done under the law [for equality] that can be done.”
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Roger Mudd, October 2, 1977
“The U.S. presidency is trapped under an avalanche of expectations generated by television news. The press has played a major role in the magnification of the powers and importance of the executive branch beyond its role of one important gear in an exceedingly complex machine.
“Vietnam-era presidents equated popularity poll gains following televised press conference with support for their position. These gains were a function of the facility with which presidents used the media- and the absence of alternatives and opposition views present such conferences.
“The poor showing most congressmen seem to make on television results in a hampered congressional role of checking presidential power.
“Sanity-five percent of America’s voters rely on the three networks as their most reliable sauce of information in choosing their candidate. There are three, so that one can act as a tiebreaker. Many politicians seem to believe that what didn’t happen on television didn’t happen.”
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Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, October 31, 1976
“People who don’t vote do vote. A nonvote for one candidate is, in fact, a vote for the other.
“Black Americans have, by law, conquered the mountain of opportunity and the next mountain to conquer is the mountain of atmosphere. The racial polarization is tighter today than it was ten years ago. Unemployment is on the rise and political corruption has not stopped- the atmosphere is not good.
“Many people cannot breathe in it [the moral decadence in America] and they give up and drop out of life. One thing that’s worse than racism is cynicism, because it is in the heart of the victim.
“It is a crime that radio and televising have replaced churches and schools as the center of social order. Those with the most information talk to the fewest people, and those with the least information talk to the most. People become the victims of song proclaiming it’s all right to make love on the first meeting and television violence, because we learn how to become good killers and baby makers but not how to be good, responsible people.
“ The United States is gripped by malaise and mediocrity of sprit. The death of ethics is the sabotage of excellence. People want maximum pay for minimum work, which is very close to students who want maximum brains for minimum study.
“ People must become self-reliant. I’m convince that nobody will save us from us or for us.”
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Bruno Bettelheim, April 18 1976
“Many of the problems that middle class parents face today can be traced to the shifting socioeconomic basis of the family. A hundred and fifty years ago all that was expected of a child was that he contribute to the economic well being of the family. Today, however, a child is expected by his family and by himself to be a success in life.
“ I submit that it’s considerably easier to work in the fields or in the family shop than it is to be a success in life. I have seen so much damage done. Children blaming parents. Parents blaming children. I am not interested in blame. I am interested in remedy.
“ To be a success in life is a terrible situation to put a child in. It used to be that craftsmanship was a tremendous bond between the generations—between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. In each case the craft was handed down. Since parents were primary teachers of the children, the children didn’t have to be told to honor and respect their parents. It flowered naturally. Honor and respect can go a long way, in the absence of love. “
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Angela Davis, October 5, 1975
“My to priority is a national effort to free people imprisoned because of racist and political oppression, as cochairman of the National Alliance Against Political and Racist Oppression.
“Capitalism is failing as an economic system in the United States because it is designed to help the few rather than the working class.
“Frustrated white people- insecure because of inflation, unemployment, and other problems- make black people and other nonwhite the scapegoats for their troubles. This is the element behind such groups as ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights), an antibusing group.
“ Government officials have not been able to resolve key issues facing the nation at any level – federal, state, or local- but people can work together to solve problems.
“ People do not realize that today’s racism in America parallels the anti-Semitism of Hitler’s Germany. I am a communist but I work with people of all facets- Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, socialist- based on the tradition of their nation.”
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Isaac Asimov, “Apollo II: The End or the Beginning of an Age?”
Any large city on earth is as far removed form the original state of things to which man has adapted as in the moon. Though man has a poor record in using his knowledge, I’m hopeful that through a moon colony he would take an intelligent interest in his modification. Moon colonization could give us an example of a small society functioning in a completely engineered, article environment.
Thus far, intelligence has been a great cross for humanity. It has done much damage. Our quest should be to seek a brotherhood of intelligence. The moon colonists would be better suited for this task than earthbound adventurers.
There are no more physical frontiers on earth. Man can stultify this drive for problem solving. But it would lead man to despair if he quailed before the difficult.
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Senator George McGovern, September 28, 1969
“No conceivable value could come of continuing the war with its mounting death toll for both sides. The American people have been more than patient in giving MR. Nixon ample time to reveal his disengagement plan, but his present pace of withdrawal will take year to execute and will produce no better solution that the one tat would come now.”
“Its outrageous for Thieu to assume he has a veto on American foreign policy and that we should be committed to years and year of troop disengagement, I believe out entire nation, as well as the people of Vietnam, would rejoice if president Nixon would announce a plan tomorrow to extricate all American forces from that tragic land in the next few months.”
“This involvement is the nation’s greatest moral, political, and military disaster. Sometimes we have forgotten where America leaves off and where other nations’ interest being. Our preoccupation with planting American ideas around the glove has taken a tragic toll in this country.”
“The right of dissent in this country is one that ought not be questions, no matter how disagreeable it may be to policymakers.”
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Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., October 28, 1968
“Everyman has the responsibility to obey the law but there are times when some men have the duty to break the law. If we do not concern ourselves with what is moral, when we have abdicate our moral responsibility. And if the people of this country abdicated our moral responsibility, we will have moral oblivion, and God save this nation form moral oblivion.”
“If the question of whether the executive branch has usurped he power of the legislative branch on declaring a war and if the question of the legality of the war in not decided by the courts, then it will be decided by a power play and that is no way to settle such an issue.”
“Whether or not my actions and those of other antidraft demonstrators are right perhaps will not be decided for 50 or 100 years. But Jefferson, Washington, Sam Adams, and other American revolutionaries were traitors until they were successful. And Thoreau, who was never read and through of as a criminal, is now, beard and all, on the face of a stamp.”
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Noel A. Day, April 4, 1965
“The schools have detrimental effect of are unable to counterbalance any environmental effects. This, to me, is a clear measure of failure. Boston public schools, in effect, have destroyed the children.”
“The movements of Negroes to urban ghetos and whites to suburban areas have made the pattern of segregation in education and housing increasingly rigid and have made it easier to confirm the Negro to the ‘compound’ – and have had profound effects on the schools.”
“Every school has a hidden curriculum. Because the Negro student sees few white faces in his school and because he sense that everyone considers his school inferior, it is inferior.”
“The fact of segregated schools say to the Negro student everyday, ‘you are a failure. You should be white if you really want to make it in this society’”
“We must insist on massive changes. Segregate schools must be integrated if that will improve education. Curricula should be changed to give the student a better perspective on our society and to deal with the ever-increasing challenges of automation and other technological advances. Yet the school system must recognize that there are many culturally deprived white children too.”
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General S.L.A. Marshall, December 7, 1964
“The United States must enter a full-scale alliance with South Vietnam or face the end of free society in Southeast Asia. The advisory position the United Sate now maintains in Vietnam, at the cost of $1 million per day, is futile. The Vietnamese Army has not launched a single major offensive nor won a major victory in six months since Genera. Maxwell Taylor became ambassador to South Vietnam.”
“General Taylor’s problems are too much for any one man. You cannot expect one man to unscrew the inscrutable.”
“The South Vietnamese soldier possess courage in an uncommon degree, but in every Viet household there is a feeling that the cause is lost.”
“The Vietnamese, with the help of the United States, have the three necessary ingredients to win- superior numbers, firepower, and defensive positions. At present they are not making full use of any of these. The mark of a losing war is that the View Army has little or no control over its own communications.”
“I refuse to believe that the President and the National Security Council cannot bring themselves to take the risks involved in escalating the war.”
“Grim alternatives necessitate grim risks. During the Kennedy years we decidedly strengthened our numbers of line troops, ostensibly for brushfire wars, accord to the Secretary of Defense. ”
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James Farmer, November 22, 1964
“The civil rights revolution is not complete. The Kennedy administration had served as a catalyst to thrust civil rights forward.”
“The Civil Rights Act is a toll with which to work. Now, dejure segregation in the South will soon become do facto segregation such as the North possesses.”
“With the aid of the Johnson administration, I foresee a massive remedial education program in the South for both whites and Negroes. There is a need for quality education through junior colleges. I see a renaissance [in my race] in art, culture, literature, and music.”
“The economic changes will come through a pooling of resources to start cooperatives and credit unions. The strife for freedom that my people are pursuing involves a freedom to make a meaningful choice in society.”
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Robert Welch, November 4, 1962
“Those that have come to see the size and color of my horns will be disappointed. They are retractable. And since my wife forgot to get the laundry yesterday, I had to wear an ordinary white shirt instead of my regular brown one with the black armband.
Membership in the John Birch Society necessitates goodwill, good conscience, and religious morals. Communists are against religion because they say that the ends justify the means. Most religions say good ends don’t justify bad means. “
“Communists have control in mass media. People don’t lean the real truth. Time, Look and the New York Ties have swallowed lies of communists.”
“The John Birch Society feels it is better to light one candle than curse the darkness. We therefore try to circulate information and try to organize ‘fronts of Americanism’ in order to help the world ‘climb out’ of the morass of collectivism.”
“Prejudices about most groups are unjust. Only with communists can you make sweeping generalizations, because their system wipes out the ethical and moral values of the individual and makes him an unthinking member of the organization.”
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Roscoe Drummond, October 15, 1962
“The United States may win the battle against Castro but lose the war against communism in South America. All power at the disposal of the Pentagon will not be sufficient to break the penetration of communism to Latin America if economic and social injustices are allowed to continue.
“The Soviet block is pouring $100 million a year into agitation and propaganda in a massive effort to exploit grave social injustice.”
“Castro can be quarantined by force, but communism cannot. The only weapons equal to the larger threat are economic and political, and apart from subversion, the only enemy is economic stagnation and explosive social frustration, both of which are on the march across the whole faces of South America.”
“It is essential that the United States actively support Latin American democracies. I am convinced that the United States will do more to win long-term support and respect by remaining true to itself and actively standing against dictatorships in every form or guise. Some Latin American groups and politicians will rant against us for interference, but most South American people will say ‘Thank God,’ at first under their breath and later openly.”
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Ayn Rand, December 17, 1961
“Under the antitrust laws- which are a mess of uncompliable unjudicable contradictions- a man becomes a criminal from the moment he goes into business, no matter what he does.”
“There is only one difference in the legal treatment according to a criminal or a business man: the criminal’s rights are protected much more securely and objectively than the businessman’s”
“Every dictatorship or potential dictatorship needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation’s troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers.”
“In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany it was the Jewish people; in America it is the businessman. How can people who profess to oppose discrimination against any minority reconcile their stand with the fact that they recognize the worker’s right to their livelihood, yet deny the businessmen’s right to their livelihood?”
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Elliot L. Richardson, October 22, 1961
“The real cost of corruption in Massachusetts is the corrosion of democracy itself. The forces necessary for an all-out attack on corruption are gathering. We need:”
“First, a stronger corruption practices act.”
“Second, a state constitutional amendment providing that an public office holder can be interrogated about any official act that occurred during his tenure of office and providing that contractors and others doing business with the commonwealth be require by law to waive the privileges against self-incrimination regarding inquiries into contract business.”
“Third, a much stronger conflict-of-interest law than that passed last spring, which is only a code of ethics.”
“Fourth, strengthening of bribery laws to prevent kickbacks to public officeholders.”
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Vance Packard, April 16, 1961
“America is in danger of becoming a nation of happiness seekers building a fun culture. We are spending three times more on chewing gum that on medical research, and more on jewelry than on basic research.”
“Problems confronting Americans are not primarily economic but rather problems involving our total well being and with roots in the spiritual aspects.”
“Americans need to develop more deeply felt personal standards of good and evil, success and failure- not for other people but for themselves.”
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Ambassador W.C. Naude, April 9, 1961
“South Africa would like to be left alone to solve her unique racial problems while continuing as a beacon of Western civilization that we intend to keep alight in Africa.”
“Most Americans simply don’t understand our policy of apartheid. The apartheid policy in South Africa is a traditional separateness and a positive policy to protect the interests of the weaker citizens. The economically weak and primitive Bantu quite possibility would have gone to the wall except for that protective policy.”
“South Africa has contributed substantially to the security of the Western world. Today we are maintaining an undisturbed, peaceful sector of Africa. I ask you to think what a frightened problem the Congo has become for the Western world. ”
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Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, November 13, 1960
“Unless America faces up to true world leadership, the country may well go under. But the American people have never failed to meet a challenge.”
“The primary problem is what kind of life we are going to establish to point out to the rest of the world that what we offer is more worthwhile that what communism has to offer.”
“No country can be a real leader unless it really wants to demonstrate moral strength and a true desire to serve. I think the peoples in the uncommitted and neutralist countries know we are asleep.”
“But I have absolute faith in out nation, with its motto of one nation under God, we will meet the challenge and we will win. Unless we win the Cold War struggle wit the Soviet Union, Khrushchev’s prediction that all of out grandchildren will be communists may well come true.”
“We can watch ourselves slowly approach destruction or we can wake p, try to find new ways, new ideas. For unless we face up to the problems of world leadership, we may well go under.”
