Question: Except for military. What has the government done to make you proud?

Glenn Beck ^ | Apr 17, 2012

[KeyLargo]

Glenn Beck is asking his listeners now on his radio program the question:

"Except for the military.

What has the government done to make you proud?"

My answer: NOTHING.

Any thoughts?

Your answers?

[2nd Bn, 11th Mar]

Illinois governors making license plates?

[iowamark]

Take the advice of the late great Andrew Breitbart and ignore Beck.

http://nation.foxnews.com/andrew-breitbart/2011/12/13/breitbart-goes-coward-glenn-beck-he-dead-me

[Jerrybob]

Government, whose job it was to PROTECT our freedoms, has of late become the ENEMY of our freedoms.

Try turning this around; we are so screwed....

[MNDude]

The US budget in 2000 was 1.8 trillion. In 2011, it was 2.8 trillion. What special thing are we getting out of the US government now?

Actually, it seems like we’re getting less and less from the government.

[Hawthorn]

Which government? There are many. But do you mean the feds? Didn’t they invent the Internet?

(I know, I know, it was actually Al Gore. But he was a federal employee — to be specific, a Congursmun — at the time!)

[mountainlion]

Thinking they are proud and intelligent they have shown they are foolish.

[q_an_a]

There are a few basic things done well by government that are not mentioned - our interstate highways, the air traffic control system, the National Weather service that may have saved dozens of lives last week in KS. While the Coast Guard is “military” they do stuff that goes above and beyond in providing safety to boaters that is not in the “defense” of our shores. Finally, the national park system makes me happy/proud every time I visit a place like Yosemite or Appalachian trail.

[Prospero]

Oh, Beck wants recently.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, something NASA plays down because it represents one of the few things inspired by conservatives the White House was unable to shut down. That, and too many scientists can't be bothered with politics (so naturally politics bothers with them.)

The LRO has been in lunar orbit almost three years, longer than anything any human contraption has ever managed to keep in lunar orbit. It has returned to Earth more data than all the previous human deep space probes combined, several times over. Photographed nearly the entire Moon in high resolution, etc. etc. And its done more than just shoot pretty pictures (again, for the first time) of human artifacts. Long after the mission is completed, for at least a decade to come, investigators will be pouring over that pile of data.

And it was all done on-time, under budget.

This reproduction of a roughly 188 meter wide segment (between lines 18602 and 19053) of LROC Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) observation M168000580R may not be the best view of the Apollo 17 lunar module descent stage or the rover tracks and foot prints left behind by Cernan & Schmitt in 1972, still it was collected from an altitude of only 22.41 kilometers on August 14, 2011; LRO orbit 9892, official resolution 0.41 meters per pixel with an incidence angle of 45.17° From the post "LROC NAC August Close-Ups, Part 3," December 31, 2011 [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

All that being said, that's not saying much for a budget and debt wall. It's not even one brick in the Washington Monument, by comparison.

Want something not Space-related?

Tough one... A picture comes to mind. That of U.S. Navy personnel as the backdoor of a helicopter opens up after landing somewhere on Sumatra after the Boxing Day earthquake in 2005. In his arms is a box of rescue supplies, and on his face is genuine apprehension.

That made me proud, I guess. And believe it or not, the federal response to Katrina made me proud, considering the state and local breakdown, I just never bought the shameless feeding frenzy of the press.

All that sounds like a lot, but it's not much.

Our nation has become decadent, a self-perpetuating orthodoxy rather than the civilizing influence it started out being, because of the shared attitudes of out people.

Last night, while channel surfing, I noted that the documentary "Woodstock" was being replayed by VH1. Watching the clueless mudbathers descending into self-absorption, I recalled that weirdness happened just about the same time as the first moon landing, and the aftermath of Ted Kennedy's freestyle swim...

‘MENĒ, MENĒ, TEKĒL, UPHARSIN.’

[broken_arrow1]

Obama authorized the Military to shoot and kill the 3 pirates who held that ship captain hostage in 2009; an act I am sure he (Obama) regrets.

That is the ONLY thing I can think of in the last 3-1/2 years.

[kosciusko51]

Thanks for mentioning LRO. I worked on the High Gain Antenna on that bird, along with the HGA on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

[TurboZamboni]

Hoover Dam is impressive, but not recent.

[capt B]

Inter- state highway system ( Pres Eisenhower’s experience in WWII provided the impetus)

[Lancey Howard]

I love those stills from the studio production. They should have made the earth a lot bigger, though. In that photo the earth looks the same size the moon looks like from the earth.

[ThomasThomas]

Locally they removed all the traffic cameras in my city.

When my friends garage caught fire it was put out quickly and his house wasn’t damaged.

The severe weather warnings last week gave people in Ok, Tx, Ks area time to be prepared.

I don’t need to boil my water before I drink it.

They are several services that state and local governments do well.

We have a high level of expectations of all our government services and that in it self we should be proud of.

[Lancey Howard]

Tough one... A picture comes to mind. That of U.S. Navy personnel as the backdoor of a helicopter opens up after landing somewhere on Sumatra after the Boxing Day earthquake in 2005. In his arms is a box of rescue supplies, and on his face is genuine apprehension.

Good one, but I would put that in the "military related" category.

[spaced]

“Which government? There are many. But do you mean the feds? Didn’t they invent the Internet?”

The Feds did create the forerunner of the Internet - called DARPANET; the “D” was for defense. It was a military thing.

[nobamanomore]

I’d like to back it completely our. Pay no taxes and ask for nothing in return, no social security, no fire dept, no police department, no public schools, I’ll take care of things myself.

[JerseyanExile]

The American air traffic control system is horribly outdated by international standards. Not only is this unsafe and has led to many crashes, but it also creates large numbers of travel delays.

[q_an_a]

yea they have been trying to get the planes on direct routes using GPS or some other technology and it is still not perfect, but look how much traffic is in the air. The highways are a little crowded and there is need of work on them too, but we move alot more stuff faster than anyone in the world.

[Marathoner]

RE: #27, I would agree. I started to mention the National Weather Service, esp. their severe weather watches and warnings.