It's time to be great again!
I have friends at NASA. It might be too late to ever be great again. It’s a bureaucracy riddled with political correctness, global warming hype, and mandatory “gay sensitivity” classes for employees. One guy I know is a physicist, a genius, he longs with all his heart to do some real science, but it’s just not allowed.
(Also note original article 1999.)
As a 12-year-old watching live images of Armstrong and Aldrin setting foot on the moon, I beamed with pride that America had won the race to the moon. But that time is passed. America doesn`t have the ability to accomplish what it once did. The Empire State Building was constructed in 18 months. Fast forward to today, to an America that should`ve had a new version of the World Trade Center up and operating by now. Instead, we have a system beset with political wrangling and special interests that all want a piece of the pie.
“Being great” with an aggressive and far-reaching space program isn`t something America can afford anymore. With budget-busting debt, three ongoing wars and a border that isn`t, it`s time to face reality. The survival of the country is in peril and America has to decide whether survival is the preferred option.
We had a great run as the undisputed leader of the world`s space efforts. But Americans over time, through their voting trends, have made the statement that greatness, though enviable, isn`t a priority worth pursuing.
And oh, by the way... the “sneering marxists” referenced in the op-ed piece. We are under the rule of one of them right now. So long as he occpies the White House, “greatness” is off the table.
Be rgreat again? Too late. Far too late. Like “Great” Britain, we’re on the same Roman arc.
“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’
‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”
— Robert A. Heinlein