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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| The Eagle has Landed |
| 2013-07-22 |
| h/t Gates of Vienna Forty-four years ago, a nation that we now know was racist, didnÂ’t care about the environment and drank too much soda, landed on the moon. Half a billion television viewers watched it happen live. They saw men walk on the surface of another world. They saw that human beings could break free of their world and take a first step into the rest of the universe. ...No one who was born after 1935 has walked on the moon. That period is swiftly becoming a historical relic. A thing that men did who lived long ago. A great work of other times, like the building of dams and fleets, the winning of wars and the expansion of frontiers. ...In those long lost days, we did great things. The bureaucrats took their cut and the contractors chiseled and the lobbyists lobbied and the whole great vulture pack of government swarmed and screeched and still somehow, with a billion monkeys on our back, we moved forward, because we still had great goals. Now our goal is government. There is no longer a moon. Only a paper moon. The whole mess of bureaucrats, contractors, lobbyists, policy experts, consultants, congressmen, aides, crooks, creeps, thieves and agents is no longer a necessary evil that we put up with in order to accomplish great things. It is the great thing that we accomplish. There are no more moon landings, no more dams or tallest buildings in the world. The massive towering edifice of our own government is now our moon landing, our Hoover Dam, our Empire State Building. ...Going to the moon was a crazy idea of course. Going beyond it would have been even crazier. Instead we settled down to the important things, like race relations, the importance of listening to music, breaking up the family, importing huge numbers of people with little use for our way of life and all the other stupid suicidal things that dying civilizations do to pass the time. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #14 Aaaaw, come on, any Ron/Rand Paul Libertarian KNOW that the moon landings were FAKED!(And da joo is behind 9/11) |
| Posted by: Bob Snore6814 2013-07-22 23:49 |
| #13 Go to your room, ret. |
| Posted by: Barbara 2013-07-22 22:13 |
| #12 If you think about it, Columbus was not only a great explorer but also an early environmentalist; after all to cross the Atlantic he only used three galleons.... |
| Posted by: USN,ret 2013-07-22 20:50 |
| #11 I'm broadly all for supporting + helping America's international allies or partners dev their SpaceProgs, but NOT iff it means Amer astronauts fall behind in skill proficiencies, + our OWG-NWO Govts,Perts consensus remains there is no such consensus. IFF THE BAMMER = USA WANTS LEGIT FREE MARKETS FOR THE PERVASIVELY FAILED-N-FAILING "GREEN/ENVIRON TECHS", THEN WE NEED TO GO BACK INTO SPACE PRONTO. As thingys stand, the Fed desires to firmly establish + entrench these "green/environ techs", but has forgotten they need the normal justifications, etc. for setting up any such markets for same. Even loyal Guam-based Democrats here on Guam admit or believe that all the Bammer + Admin is doing is using US Taxpayer dollars to payoff Party-Campaign Cronies using "Green/Environ Techs" as legal PCorrect-Deniable cover story. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2013-07-22 19:50 |
| #10 or the Space Pen™ |
| Posted by: Frank G 2013-07-22 19:22 |
| #9 Without the manned space program, we wouldn't have Tang(tm) |
| Posted by: SteveS 2013-07-22 17:46 |
| #8 BP is mad cause we didn't ask a Kevin to come along. :) |
| Posted by: Shipman 2013-07-22 17:38 |
| #7 That's a best-case scenario, BP, if the Leftists keep screwing with our country. >:-( |
| Posted by: Barbara 2013-07-22 17:33 |
| #6 Are you saying America's future could fare as well as Portugals? |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2013-07-22 16:03 |
| #5 Columbus was a dope, BP. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2013-07-22 15:19 |
| #4 Sorry but the manned space program is the most politically vain, "panem et circences" misallocation of taxpayer capital IN THE WORLDS HISTORY. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2013-07-22 15:08 |
| #3 Exactly. I grew up in the Space Shuttle era, and watched the dream die. It's why I don't have children, and would hesitate if the opportunity came along. I feel it's wrong to give up hope. But I also feel it would be wrong to condemn my own children to a world that no longer values big dreams. |
| Posted by: RandomJD 2013-07-22 11:41 |
| #2 Good, albut somewhat depressing stuff: The eagle landed in a mud puddle in D.C. The last men who walked on the moon will probably be dead within a decade. WeÂ’ll tell our kids about it and theyÂ’ll shake their heads because whatÂ’s the big deal anyway? Everyone flies around in spaceships in all the movies. Why bother doing it in real life? They donÂ’t bother doing anything in real life. And then theyÂ’ll go off to another class that will teach them how much carbon waste the space program added and how many super-hurricanes it caused and how much better off we are now that we no longer have cars, plastic bags or air conditioning. Sad really.... |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2013-07-22 11:14 |
| #1 That same year - 1969 - we also had a half a million men in a land war in Asia and we right in the middle of the largest infrastructure program ever - the Interstate Highway System. After 44 years of "progress", we have a tiny space program, a shrinking military, and crumbling infrastructure. I prefer the 1969 priorities. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2013-07-22 09:27 |