At last
count, Congress Assembled contains two physicists, two chemists, two
biologists, one geologist, 234 lawyers and an astronaut, putting the
lawyers within striking distance of an absolute
majority . No other profession approaches this 43.5% plurality, and
under
quorum rules only lawyers can construe, for they wrote them themselves,
it
usually constitutes a de facto majority.
Science
has a fierce anthropological identity, and like the law, a pecking order
of its own. Lawyers did not invent Physics Envy --ask around academe and you
will find any geologist worth his salt considers himself the equal of any 10 of
his colleagues, and each of them will assert that any oilfield hand is
twice as good as a physics whiz, for without geophysics, physicists wouldn't
have a planet to stand on.
Physicists
in turn sniff that they are universally acknowledged to be worth 11 chemists
each, for such was the ratio in the Manhattan Project. This cuts no mustard with biologists, who
are quick to point
out that the Manhattan
project failed miserably in its goal of exterminating life on earth because
chemists and physicists do not know bupkes about life, which is the province of
the Intelligent Design movement. Since the ID movement is a legal construct,
its being really wrong persuades the biologists that-even in their present,
only mildly evolved form-they are each worth 20 lawyers, maybe more. "Nonsense",
say the chemists, "We've done the math !" Since other professionals
are
constituted entirely out of chemicals,chemists think themselves to be
conservatively two to six orders of magnitude better than the rest, at
standard temperature and pressure.
Yet it is one of America's glories that while immigrants cannot aspire to the White
House, they are at liberty to run for Congress, and scores have been elected and
will continue to be. Since our nation remains the world's greatest magnet for
engineering talent, the strange dearth of engineers in the corridors of power
may soon be remedied--China alone sends thousands of engineers to our shores
each year, for despite its astonishing economy, something makes the best and
the brightest there flee in droves-and
it certainly isn't the growing imperial power of the Chinese Bar Association.
All nine
members of the neo-Politburo running the People's Republic are engineers, just
like Herbert Hoover. The Great Engineer's road to the White House ran through
mine management in China
Were he still in power, he would note the
profound difference between Mao's retromingent Great Leap forward and what
Beijung's new entrepreneurial technocrats have in mind. Being engineers, they
actually have an energy policy.
Be very
afraid, lawyers-these are not Jimmy Carter retreads. They combine thermodynamic
literacy and a grasp of energy economics with the Best Practices sensibility of
the MBAs that they are as well. Take light bulbs-they have the bright idea that
chucking incandescent bulbs into the dustbin of technology can save a bundle of
money, and free even more for capital investment. So efficient are
light-emitting diodes that replacing one third of all the conventional bulbs in China would slash hydropower
demand and render another $24,000,000,000 Yangtze River Dam superfluous, saving
a cool billion a year in power bills and a vast acreage of farmland from ending
up like New Orleans.
So farewell Adam Smith: The engineering mandarins have the mandate of Heaven to invest the peoples pension funds in say, "The East Is Red Candlepower Corporation" and dictate to the proletariat that they screw in what they are told. Hoover himself saw this coming , explaining his professions political eclipse in a free society thus : "The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open...He cannot bury his mistakes like the doctors, he cannot argue them into thin air like the lawyers... He cannot, like the politicians , screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope the people forget ...If his works do not work , he is damned."
So many of Hoover's works worked so well that FDR had no recourse but
to change the course of the Colorado by building a damned big dam and
naming it in Hoover's honor.
It's still standing , That it has endured the West's largest river roaring through it for three generations--and uncountable gigawatt hours--suggests a political moral- the Republic's survival may well depend on reinforcing Congress by electing without delay two engineering geologists , a prospector , and a mule well versed in the art and science of filibustering.
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