October 7, 2003 - The semi-professional Clark detractors, both those who profess loyalty to one of the other 8 men who seek the Democratic nomination for President and those Bush loyalists who spend their energy trying to get Democrats to nominate the weakest of all possible candidates, have taken to referring to General Clark as “Crazy Wesley”. They point to an offhand remark he made about time travel and his confidence that the inventive curiosity of humankind will someday let us realize velocities greater than the speed of light. They suggest, and none too kindly, that the General is spinning off in a fantasy and moving at warp speed, after all E=MC squared is the limit.

Well his remarks rang a bell with me as well. It reminded me of something that I had read earlier in one of the popular scientific magazines I frequently read in the Doctor’s waiting room. I don’t remember which one but I did remark to myself that I had seen those comments before. Indeed I had, in a review of the latest edition of A Brief History of Time, a book by Dr. Stephen Hawking. For those readers who are not familiar with Stephen Hawking let me explain that he is the world recognized authority on theoretical physics and the quantum theory. When physicists, mathematicians and cosmologists speak of Hawking their voices are tinged with awe.

You have probably seen occasional images of Dr. Hawking giving his lectures. He suffers from Lou Gehrig’s Disease, is confined to a wheel chair and has lost the use of his voice. When he lectures he speaks with the use of an artificial voice powered by a computer that he controls with puffs of breath. He has lost the use of his body almost entirely but retains the use of his magnificent mind. In the rarified atmosphere of theoretical physics he rises above his colleagues and the cutting edge of their profession is where Hawking defines it. Hawking says that Einstein was wrong. Time travel and speeds greater than the speed of light can be realized. Here is a link to Dr. Hawking’s public lecture on the subject: http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/warps.html

Wesley Clark is not so crazy after all. What his detractors point to as evidence that he strays into an unreal world is not that at all. It is evidence that he is aware of and looks to the cutting edge of knowledge. John Kennedy once referred to a dinner at the honoring award winning scholars as the greatest assemblage of genius at the Whitehouse with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. It was Kennedy’s vision that led America to realize a yearning that only had existed in the pages of science fiction. That is the kind of vision that we need in our leaders; vision that reaches to the edges of our knowledge and seeks to step beyond; vision that embraces the Hawkings of our world and seeks to harness their contributions in the progress of humankind.