If the bulk of academic and diplomatic opinion was so averse to SDI and to some scientists, very idea of missile defense was so “unworkable,” why then did the Soviet Union fight so long and adamantly against it? The Soviet Union was convinced the SDI would work and were convinced that America could achieve exactly what we set out to do. Here is Apollo’s legacy: Any technological challenge America undertakes, it can accomplish. The reason this legacy had currency was the success of Apollo. We had attempted and successfully achieved a technical goal-one so difficult and demanding, that it made virtually any similar technical goal seem achievable. Moreover, this was goal that the Soviets themselves had attempted and failed. They reasoned that getting into a decade long competition with America on SDI would similarly end in an American victory and would be a race that would destroy their system, as indeed, it did.
President Kennedy started Apollo and the race to the Moon as a Cold War gambit; a way to demonstrate the superiority of the free and democratic way of life to that of our communist adversaries. That goal was successfully achieved to a degree still not fully appreciated today. The success of the Apollo program gave America something it did not realize was so important - technical credibility. When President Reagan announced SDI twenty years later, the Soviets were against it, not because it was destabilizing and provocative, but because they thought we would succeed, rendering their vast military machine, assembled at great cost to their people and economy, obsolete in an instant. Among other factors, this hastened the end of the Cold War in our favor. Space advocates often lament the lack of direction of today’s space program. An unspoken concern by many who feel this way is the accompanying lack of determination and commitment in our current space program. They look back wistfully on the glory days of Apollo, when esprit d’corps was high, the work days were long and hard, and sleeves were rolled up and teeth were set in determination. It was like a war then. It was. And we won it."
The left-leaning website Jezebel kicked off the latest attack on Walker, a Republican who is considering a 2016 presidential bid, with an article headlined “Scott Walker Wants Colleges To Stop Reporting Sexual Assaults.”
“Under Walker’s budget, universities would no longer have to report the number of sexual assaults that take place on a campus to the Department of Justice. Under Walker’s plan, university employees who witness a sexual assault would no longer have to report it,” Jezebel reporter Natasha Vargas-Cooper wrote on Friday............."
Walker must be over the target.
Warren dings Walker over comments on unions and ISIS - "Warren, who is closely aligned with progressive union groups, ripped Walker in a tweet Saturday for what some saw as a comparison between union members and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria:
"If Scott Walker sees 100,000 teachers & firefighters as his enemies, maybe it's time we take a closer look at his friends.”....."
Example #632 illustrating the impulse to ignore what experts say is often the correct one.