Earth's ruin complete, Mars next

Auburn Plainsman ^ | 1-23-04 | Auburn Plainsman

[ambrose]

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Earth's ruin complete, Mars next

Column by David Mackey

January 22, 2004

Look out, Mars. Dubya's coming.

Faced with unrest in Iraq, economic worries at home and a growing deficit, President Bush did the only logical thing: he decided to leave the planet.

In Tuesday's State of the Union address, Bush proposed doubling NASA's budget to fund a permanent station on the moon and, one day, a manned mission to Mars, at a cost of more than $1 billion.

One can't help but speculate as to Bush's motives. To the best of our knowledge, there is neither oil nor weapons of mass destruction on Mars. And Martians aren't known for their cheap migrant labor or fat campaign contributions, so I'm stumped.

Mars (soon to be The Halliburton Red Planet Presented by Fox News) does have a few obvious advantages for Bush. No United Nations up there, few minorities, non-Christians or homosexuals to offend and, best of all, it's easy to pronounce.

The last time America looked to the heavens for inspiration, we were engaged in another global clash of cultures, the Cold War.

This nostalgic space challenge is merely a cheap, meaningless way to buy patriotism. It's a resume booster, a guaranteed applause line for stump speeches.

Naturally, the space cowboy's plan raised more than a few eyebrows and a lot of hard questions. Why toss billions into the stratosphere while simultaneously cutting taxes, rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan and adding a monstrous prescription drug entitlement to Medicare on top of deficits that would already make a drunken Kennedy blush?

Will this do anything to improve the lives of the American taxpayers (besides unemployed rocket scientists)? Will a Mars mission feed the hungry, house the homeless or educate disadvantaged children?

But the most important question is the one no one is asking. Why is this any business of the government's?

Read the Constitution. (It's that document that used to be the foundation of our law.)

Nowhere is the government empowered to explore space, and the Tenth Amendment bars the feds from doing anything not expressly permitted. Of course, that hasn't stopped them since the days of FDR and the equally unconstitutional New Deal, so why quibble now?

Mars may very well hold the answers to scientific secrets that could revolutionize technology and make all of our lives better -- which is why NASA should immediately be disbanded and its assets sold on the market.

Space exploration should be funded by private investors risking their own money, not ours. It is unconscionable to force every taxpayer to pay for a nonessential project they may or may not support.

So let's compromise. Bush can have Mars if he'll give us Earth. We'll even throw in some Tang.

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[ambrose]

Nowhere is the government empowered to explore space

Idiot alert...

"Section 8. The Congress shall have power to... To promote the progress of science and useful arts ... To provide and maintain a navy"

That's Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution

[Texasforever]

The attack of the Ludites.

[RLK]

A good example of high school journalism.

[Texasforever]

Change the name from Bush to JFK and the LBJ, change the war from Iraq to Viet NAM, and this is the same article written in 1963 about the Moon mission. All of the same tired old "spend the money on social issues instead of throwing it away in space". An oldie but a goodie.

[MediaMole]

After reading these vacuous ramblings spewing forth from Auburn, only one phrase comes to mind...

ROLL TIDE!

[Sparticus]

Earth First!!
We can strip mine the rest of the galaxy when the time is right.

[Aracelis]

From ambrose: "Section 8. The Congress shall have power to... To promote the progress of science and useful arts ... To provide and maintain a navy"

Are you angry yet???

[MediaMole]

To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;

I support space exploration, but this give congress the right to establish patents and copyrights.

[mitch5501]

"This nostalgic space challenge is merely a cheap, meaningless way to buy patriotism. It's a resume booster, a guaranteed applause line for stump speeches."

Why would it boost his resume? why would it bring guaranteed applause?

Perhaps because it makes a welcome change from the anti christian/homosexual agenda/abortion/Iraqi oil/tree hugging/patriot bashing/Bush bashing/America bashing/flag burning/UN loving/all beliefs are valid/multi-cultural/politically correct swill that confronts us everytime a liberal opens his or her mouth?

Buying patriotism?...I think it's because he's a patriot!

Idiot

[JasonC]

100 years from now, no one will remember the tax rate last year. No one will remember whether the economy grew 5% or 3% or 1%. People will not care about W or Clinton any more than they now care about Taft or Cleveland, they will just know democratic politics continued and things more or less stayed on an even keel.

But just as last December they remembered that a couple of bicycle mechanics took to the air over a North Carolina beach, 100 years from now they will remember whether and when we went to Mars. They will remember every jot and tittle of it, when the writer of this piece, and all his readers, are bleached bones, and all the dross of their combined material possessions are moldering in scrap heaps or buried in landfill.

The writer thinks Mars doesn't matter, because he suffers from the delusion that he does. He doesn't. As one writer (R.P. Harrison, if anyone wants to know) has put it, "there exists an allegiance between the dead and the unborn of which we the living are merely the ligature." He has not this basic humility, and because it he is blind. Those who know better will do the right thing despite him and those like him.

[Fledermaus]

Funny, I watched the SOTU and I've read a lot about it afterwards and the consensus and facts say Bush never even mentioned the space program.

[Paul C. Jesup]

100 years from now, no one will remember the tax rate last year. No one will remember whether the economy grew 5% or 3% or 1%. People will not care about W or Clinton any more than they now care about Taft or Cleveland, they will just know democratic politics continued and things more or less stayed on an even keel.

That is where you are wrong, a 100 years from now, they will be talking about how the U.S. finally collapsed and they will compare it's Presidents to the Emperors of Ancient Rome.

[Prodigal Son]

Of course, this is merely speculation on your part as well.

[ambrose]

Funny, I watched the SOTU and I've read a lot about it afterwards and the consensus and facts say Bush never even mentioned the space program.

Yes, the author of this article is a blithering idiot. Opponents of space exploration usually are.

[Fledermaus]

Yep, I just went back and read the entire transcript of the SOTU and there was NO MENTION of NASA, the moon or Mars.

So the writer of this article starts out with a bald faced lie. Typical of idiots.

[kingu]

Never confuse a RAT with facts; you're distorting their reality and might be giving them ammo.

For example, I read the first couple lines of the story, the statement that this was proposed in the SOTU address, and then dismissed anything else the author might have been trying to say. If they base their article on an invention of fantasy, I have to assume everything else that follows will be also an invention of fantasy.

[ambrose]

You are so on the money here.

The problem is that so many people - like the author of this article - don't go beyond asking "what is in it for *ME*, right *NOW*?"

A historic legacy or doing something which will change the course of mankind for the better is not of interest to them.

Pretty sad.

[Fledermaus]

Yep, starting with a lie is usually followed by more.

But RATS are so stupid that if Howard Dean told them 2+2=5, they'd argue the point and call any Republican that says it's 4 of being racist or something.

Thanks public education of the last 20 years! (it wasn't that bad when I was in it from 1963-1977)

[ambrose]

Mars ping.