Arsenals of Folly

by Richard Rhodes

The U.S. government, he points out, “does not require true believers to run it…. The system consciously runs by men who—in order to stay in the game, to be close to the center of power, to have the hope that someday the moment may come when their own true values will be served—will go on for years serving values that are the opposite of what they privately believe.” Hence the frequent phenomenon of recantation from retirement.