A Laboratory for Freedom
My knowledge of the splitting of the atom comes from two sources, The Curve of Binding Energy, published by John McPhee, a staff-writer for the New Yorker, in 1974, and The Griffin, written by a nuclear-physicist Arnold Kramish and published in 1986. I saw an article in the German news-magazine Der Spiegel about The Griffin, in its German translation Der Greif. I recommend both books to my readers.
The two books couldn't be more different. The older book, Curve, chronicles the increasing power of nuclear weapons developed in American laboratories after World War II. Griffin chronicles the discovery of nuclear energy in Germany before World War II, after the Nazis had assumed control, and the scientists' sobering acknowledgment of its potentially destructive uses.
"Splitting the atom" basically expresses the process of firing a neutron at a Uranium atom. The split Uranium atom releases more energy than any other process known to man. In a bomb, that splitting causes an explosion that dwarfs the effect of any other weapon known to man. A controlled splitting produces more energy than any other technology available. In a controlled setting, a nuclear reactor produces quiet, smokeless, and seemingly limitless energy.
Splitting occurs in many areas of the modern human environment. Human cells split in the womb of the mother, producing a fully-formed infant at the time of birth. Corporations split when the single corporation engages in disparate endeavors that require different staff-people and separate facilities. The Bell System did that by court order and split into seven "Baby Bells," who succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the company founders and the court that supervised the split. A split may also reflect the disparate visions of the company leadership.
Nations must also split when the forces that divide the nation exceed the forces uniting it. When a human cell divides, one side pulls away forcibly from the other. In the natural world, a status quo does not exist. Living things are always in transition. When the desire for a status quo exceeds the natural flow of life, then we have a problem—we Americans do, that is.
America consists of three unrecognized nations that fight and accuse each other constantly, mainly because they lack the courage or character to take the next irrevocable step—the natural next step—to divide and gain recognition as nations in their own right. Feuding Americans cannot bear for their rivals to abandon them. They would rather subdue their rivals than let them leave. Face it, America! That subjugation of our rivals goes on 24/7. We feel no end of stress because of it.
Disunity that cannot transition into new concepts of nations hurts America—our land with so many inherent strengths. Scientists needed a laboratory to split the atom and create an endless source of new energy. We need to open a new laboratory to split the nation, to serve the purposes of freedom, and to create a release of energy such as America has not seen in years!