Observing how nature appears to operate, scientists formulate and dream up experiments to test hypotheses.  Observing that milkmaids who contracted cowpox were immune to smallpox, Edward Jenner hypothesized that something in these women’s bodies blocked smallpox.  Experimenting, Jenner injecting material from cowpox ulcers into non-milkmaids and, essentially, scourges from smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, cholera, polio and more were expunged from the human experience.   

Albert Einstien’s predicted that matter is unimaginable quanta of energy compressed in atomic nuclei.  To test Einstein’s hypothesis, physicists compressed a baseball size sphere of plutonium to a marble.  In a literal flash, the Nuclear Age was born.  Igniting explosive compounds inside cylinders, Dr. Robert Goddard tested Newton’s Third Law of Motion.  Decades later men walked on the Moon.  Today, Rovers transmit color, 3D, videos of Mars’s deserts and mountains. 

Like other natural scientists, Psychologists and Sociologists observe, hypothesize and experiment with human behavior.  Beginning in 1774, a collection of men I view as “social scientists” convened to hypothesize a new Democratic Government.  Codified in the Constitution of the Unted Sates of America, like any proposition theirs remains open to experiment.   

Eight and a half decides after the Nation’s birth, eleven Confederated States of America seceding from the Union and its first test occurred. April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Courthouse the Founding Fathers’ hypothesis was affirmed.    

The second and only other serious challenge to America’s government occurred when, failing to achieve reelection, President Donald J. Trump dreamt up an experiment to test the hypothesis.  On January 6, 2021 the President assembled and ordered a mob of four thousand to assault our United States Capitol Building and Congress.  While its specific objectives seem ill-defined, assassination of Nancy Pelozi and Vice President Mike Pence, disbanding Congress, suspending the Constitution and declaring Donald J. Trump President for Life seem apparent.   

After hours of hand-to-hand combat, Capitol Police and other law-enforcement personnel repelled the insurrectionists (“Patriots” vandalizing the Capitol Building, defecating on floors, urinating on walls, murdering Military Veteran and Officer Brian Sicknik) and restored civility to America’s Seat of Government.  The early hours of January 7, Congress reconvened to fulfill its Constitutional mandate of certifying the States’ Electoral votes.  Again, the Founding Fathers’ hypothesis affirmed!  

Amid that earlier seditious test of the Union, President Abraham Lincoln eulogized those, like Capitol Police Officer Sicknik, who “gave the last full measure of devotion,” and implored that Americans “be here dedicated to the great task .  .  .  that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”