On Friday, I wrote that it was Martin Luther King's actual birthday, however, today all across the US they officially observe it as a public holiday.
Nearly a year on since the inauguration of President Obama, I think that it is fair to say that one of the reasons I did not support Senator John McCain's bid for the presidency, (Reaganomics, hardline anti-Soviet Union, pro Nicaraguan Contras, etc.) was that in 1983 he was one of some twenty senators who opposed the creation of a federal holiday celebrating Dr King.
To be fair he did go on to say that he had been wrong, but that was more than a quarter-of-a-century later.
Anyway, the other name you will have noticed in the header is that of the late Dr. Jacob Bronowski, one of my all-time heroes, who would have been 102 today.
He was a scientist, a humanitarian, and a great chess player. As an official observer of the after-effects of the Nuclear Holocausts in Japan, he tried to better understand the nature of violence.I first saw him on the telly in the BBC series The Ascent of Man in 1973.
In one episode "Knowledge or Certainty", he is standing by a pond in Auschwitz, where he had lost many family members during the Nazi era.
He then says some of the most profound words ever uttered:
Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people... It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave... [in the words of] Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken".
You can watch it yourselves at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd3lanJHduQ
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