The Fevers of Reason. Gerald Weissmann
that of polio in 1954 and with twenty-fold more people killed each year. But in terms of public health, we are still at the pre-Salk level when it comes to gunshot violence. We know what causes the disease (bullets), we know the vector (guns, rifles, assault weapons, etc.), and we know where in the body the injuries lodge (watch any episode of NCIS). We actually know more about this condition than we know about threats such as cancer of the prostate or leukemia.
We also know some of the scoial factors involved. In the United States, kids are at risk: think Columbine and Sandy Hook. The death rate of blacks in the Unites States from firearms violence is twice that of the general population, with black youngsters ages15–24 particularly susceptible. Britain has a death rate from gun violence of 0.23; in the Bahamas, it’s 22.2. If one compares two cities, Seattle and Vancouver, which have similar populations and overall crime rates, the Washingtonians were 4.8 times more likely to be killed with a handgun than their neighbors to the north. The Canadians have strict handgun control laws. We have a few clues to what might blunt the epidemic here in the United States: it’s clear that the more gun dealers there are in any city, the more firearm deaths are recorded. It’s also well documented that the more rigorous firearm laws are in any given state, the lower the rate of firearm fatalities. Conclusion: stay away from places with lots of guns, lots of gun dealers, and weak gun control laws. Avoid gun-toting Rocker/NRA bullies who still call President Obama a mongrel. But that advice is on a par with 1954 public health warnings to avoid E. coli–infested swimming pools during a polio epidemic.
EVEN BEFORE HIS NAMING OF THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, Ike had a solid history of spotting bullies in the act of plunder. On May 26, 1944, eleven days before D-day, General of the Armies Dwight D. Eisenhower issued an unusual proclamation, quoted in full in Robert Edsel’s The Monuments Men. Hoping to avoid the destruction of cultural heirlooms in the battle for Hitler’s Fortress Europe, Ike gave his troops a clear command: “Inevitably, in the path of our advance will be found historical monuments and cultural centers which symbolize to the world all that we are fighting to preserve. It is the responsibility of every commander to protect and respect these symbols whenever possible.” Eisenhower’s command was widely respected; it also served as the marching order for the Monuments Men. Ike and his crew of GI monument wardens knew that they were dealing with art-hoarding Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and that amateur dauber, Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler. In consequence, as Allied troops fought their way from the Channel beaches to the doors of Berlin, the Monuments Men paid attention not only to monuments but also to portable treasures filched from occupied countries and Germany’s own citizens. Thanks to that D-day order, and to the devotion and service of the Monuments Men, thousands of treasures were saved from destruction.
On April 2, 1946, less than a year after war ended in Europe, General Eisenhower was honored at a gala reception hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. One of the Met’s own Monuments Men, Director James Rorimer (played by Matt Damon in the movie), greeted his commander as Ike was hailed for his “oversight of the repatriation of artworks stolen by the Nazis during World War II.” Eleven of these are now in the collection of the Metropolitan, given by families whose treasures had been saved; a tour of the lot is online today. Ike told the Met audience what the Monuments Men had unearthed the year before:
There, in caves, in mines, and in isolated mountain hideouts, we found that Hitler and his gang, with unerring instinct for enriching themselves, had stored art treasures filched from their rightful owners throughout conquered Europe. Alongside bar and minted gold were found paintings, statues, tapestries, jewelry, and all else that the Nazis knew mankind would pay much to rescue and to preserve.
The moment is captured in a much-reproduced photo from the National Archives, which shows General Eisenhower at a salt mine near Merkers in the company of Generals Omar Bradley and “Blood and Guts” George Patton. At the Met he was in different company. Ike would serve the museum as trustee (1948–1953) and honorary trustee (1953–1969). His fellow trustees included Thomas B. Watson of IBM and Arthur Hayes Sulzberger of the New York Times, both also trustees of Columbia University. They saw in Eisenhower a future president of their university, and perhaps of the United States.
IKE, WHO HAD BEGUN TO DALLY with amateur oil painting, made reference in his museum talk to a fellow army artist, Bill Mauldin, the stellar cartoonist of Stars and Stripes. He said, “Frequently the soldier was led to express in artistic fashion something of his own reactions to the phenomena of war. At least you are acquainted with the efforts of our friend Mr. Mauldin in this regard, who spared no pains to show what he thought of us brass hats.” Mauldin had ridiculed the spit-and-polish regulations General Patton imposed on his battle-weary troops. In return, old “Blood and Guts” had Mauldin hauled into his office for “sabotaging military discipline” and threatened “to throw his ass in jail.” Mauldin’s biographer, Todd de Pastino, tells the story. As soon as he heard the news, Eisenhower overruled Patton’s censure, issuing a directive that no commanders were to interfere with the Stars and Stripes—including Mauldin’s cartoons. Ike’s stand on a free press was welcomed by the GIs, hailed by the press, and spread to a wider public in the postwar years. It confirmed Ike’s reputation as a brass hat in touch with civil society: some saw it as a first step to higher office than military command.
SUSAN EISENHOWER, IKE’S GRANDDAUGHTER, tells us that, overseas in 1942, Ike wrote in his diary a short eulogy on his father, who had died back home in Abilene, Kansas: “His finest monument is his reputation.” He could have been describing himself. When Ike returned to the United States, his reputation had soared as a leader of men who swept the Nazis from Europe in the world’s greatest battle to date. He’d juggled the demands of prima donna generals such as Montgomery and Patton and thorny allies like de Gaulle; he had established interim civil regimes in the liberated countries and in partitioned Germany; he had exposed and opened the concentration camps; he’d attended to monuments and returned stolen treasures. As shown in his speech at the Metropolitan Museum, he was also a true humanist who spoke and wrote well: “They who have dwelt with death will be among the most ardent worshipers of life and beauty and of the peace in which these can thrive.”
With a legion of fans behind him and active support by Republican stalwarts such as Watson and Sulzberger and progressive Democrats like James Roosevelt, the “Draft Ike” movement began as early as 1948 and hit its stride in 1952, as David Pietrusza points out. After a brief stint as president of Columbia University—to establish his bona fides as a civilian leader—Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower swept the Electoral College, 442 to 89, to become our thirty-fourth president.
Only the Dixiecrat states refused Ike their votes, but Ike made his position clear. In 1953, in his first State of the Union message, he declared: “I propose to use whatever authority exists in the office of the President to end segregation in the District of Columbia, including the federal government, and any segregation in the Armed Forces.” He used that authority, and followed it up with the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. And then, of course, Ike presided over the interstate highways, the end of the Korean War, the start-up of NASA, the establishment of the National Medal of Science, and the pushback against “so many handguns out there.” Finally, after two terms in Washington, Ike proudly stated: “The United States never lost a soldier or a foot of ground in my administration. We kept the peace. People ask how it happened—by God, it didn’t just happen, I’ll tell you that.”
The summer of 1997 was a busy one for phone lines, email connections, and delivery services between Baltimore and Worcester, with numerous collaborative experiments.
—Andrew Z. Fire, Nobel Lecture (2006)
NEWS OF THOSE “NUMEROUS COLLABORATIVE EXPERIMENTS” went viral after December 10, 2006, when King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden honored Andrew Fire of Stanford and Craig Mello of the University of Massachusetts with the Nobel