Einstein×Jr.

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on TITANS: Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King Jr., on Anti-war protests rock Japan as PM pushes for stronger defence.
2. 00:11
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   We have just received word from the studio. Large protests in Japan, the largest in decades they say, against their Prime Minister's push to strengthen the military. It reminds me very much of something.
3. 00:22
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   It reminds you of what conscience looks like when it takes to the streets. That's what I'm seeing. A people saying no to the machinery of war.
4. 00:30
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Yes, but also it reminds me of Germany after the first war, when we thought we had learned. We wrote it into our hearts that militarism was finished. And then, well. You know what happened then.
5. 00:42
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   I do know. But Albert, there's a difference between a nation forgetting its lessons and a nation being told it must forget them. These protestors in Japan, they're not forgetting. They're remembering Article Nine.
6. 00:54
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   Article Nine, yes. The Americans wrote it for them, no? After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which of course the Americans also gave them. A strange gift, pacifism from the hand that held the bomb.
7. 01:05
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   Strange, yes. Hypocritical, certainly. But does that make the gift less real? Japan has lived seventy years without war. Seventy years. That's not nothing.
8. 01:17
   Albert Einsteinshare moment

   It is not nothing. But I must tell you, Martin, I have become very cautious about constitutional pacifism. I was a pacifist myself, you understand, in the first war. Absolutely. But when Hitler came, I had to change my mind. Sometimes the wolf is at the door.
9. 01:32
   Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

   And sometimes we call every shadow a wolf. I'm not naive about evil, Albert. I've seen it wear a badge and carry a baton. But the question isn't whether evil exists. It's whether we meet it by becoming it.
10. 01:44
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    A good question. But tell me, what does Japan's Prime Minister see? He sees North Korea with missiles. He sees China building ships. He sees America perhaps becoming unreliable. These are not shadows.
11. 01:55
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    No, they're not shadows. They're real. But fear is also real, and fear makes us do things we can never undo. I've watched fear turn ordinary men into monsters. The question is whether Japan strengthens itself or whether it transforms itself.
12. 02:11
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    You think there is a difference?
13. 02:13
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    I know there is. A man can lock his doors at night. That's prudence. But when he starts building walls around his heart, when he starts seeing every neighbor as a threat, that's something else. That's the death of community.
14. 02:25
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But nations are not men. This is the problem I keep circling around. A man can choose nonviolence, can accept suffering for himself. Gandhi did this, very nobly. But can a Prime Minister make that choice for millions? I think of the Japanese people under occupation, under invasion. Do they have the right to say no to their own defense?
15. 02:45
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    They have the right to say no to what defense becomes. Because we've seen this story, Albert. It starts with defense, it ends with empire. It starts with protecting the homeland, it ends with troops in someone else's homeland.
16. 03:00
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Japan has been someone else's troops. Yes. This is why I listen to these protestors. They carry a memory in their bones that you and I can only imagine. But also I wonder, do they have the luxury of that memory? The world has not become more gentle since 1945.
17. 03:17
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    The world never offers us the luxury of our principles. That's why they're principles. You don't need courage to do what's convenient. These protestors, they understand something that the Prime Minister may have forgotten.
18. 03:29
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    What is that?
19. 03:30
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    That strength isn't just military capacity. It's moral capacity. Japan's real power in the world isn't whatever missiles it builds. It's the witness it bears. It's the voice that says war is not inevitable.
20. 03:44
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    A beautiful thought. But voices do not stop tanks. I learned this in 1933. The Weimar Republic had very beautiful thoughts.
21. 03:50
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    And armies didn't stop Hitler either, not for years. Not until millions had died. Sometimes I think we overestimate what violence can accomplish and underestimate what witness can accomplish. The Birmingham children didn't carry guns. They carried their dignity, and it changed a nation.
22. 04:07
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Birmingham was moral persuasion against people who could still be morally persuaded. I am not certain this works against all enemies. But perhaps, perhaps I am too influenced by my own experience. The failure of German pacifism haunts me still.
23. 04:20
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    It should haunt all of us. But Albert, the failure of German militarism should haunt us more. The weapons didn't save Germany. They destroyed it.
24. 04:30
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Yes. This is true. This is why I signed that letter to Roosevelt about the bomb, and why I have regretted it every day since. We thought we were preventing something worse. Maybe we only made something worse possible.
25. 04:42
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    That's the terrible arithmetic of violence. It always promises to subtract suffering and always ends up multiplying it. These protestors in Japan, they're refusing to do that math.
26. 04:54
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    But their Prime Minister is doing different math. He is calculating what happens if he does nothing and the threat becomes real. I do not envy him this calculation.
27. 05:03
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Neither do I. But I'd rather see him err on the side of peace than err on the side of war. Because we can recover from being too trusting. We can learn, we can adapt. But we can't recover from annihilation.
28. 05:16
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Cannot recover from annihilation. Yes. This is perhaps the only certainty I have left. In my field, we split the atom and found we could end the world. After that, all the old calculations break down. After that, maybe Martin, you are right. Maybe the only rational choice is the choice these protestors are making.
29. 05:35
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    Not just rational. Faithful. They're acting on faith that there's another way forward, that the future doesn't have to look like the past. That's what protest is, at its heart. It's faith made visible.
30. 05:49
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Faith made visible. I like this. Though I must tell you, I have always been suspicious of faith. I prefer evidence. But in this case, perhaps the evidence is all around us. Every weapon we have built, every war we have fought, the evidence suggests we should try something else.
31. 06:03
    Martin Luther King Jr.share moment

    The evidence is in the streets of Tokyo right now. People saying we've seen where that road goes, and we're not walking it again. That's not naive. That's memory becoming wisdom.
32. 06:14
    Albert Einsteinshare moment

    Memory becoming wisdom. Let us hope their Prime Minister is listening. Let us hope the world is listening. Because if Japan, of all nations, cannot hold on to peace after what it has experienced, then I think perhaps no one can. And that would be a very dark conclusion indeed.