Posted on 01/16/2004 4:07:34 AM PST by from occupied ga
Imagine your neighbor throwing a party to show off his brand new high-tech boat – or flower garden or remodeled kitchen. Pick your item and imagine the triumph in your neighbor’s eyes, voice and body language. You would surely be a spoilsport to try to rain on his parade with any kind of negative or derisive comment. What a mean thing that would be! But imagine that you discovered that your neighbor had built his invention by first raiding his other neighbor’s savings account. His fabulous new gizmo no longer looks so fabulous to you and, you conclude, it is quite perverse that it looks fabulous to him. Sure, it is still something of a wonder – what a thing to create, to build. But it cannot be reasonably denied that the means by which the fellow got the thing done, namely, by robbing his other neighbor, cast a very serous cloud over whatever wonderful thing he made that way.
Well, that’s how I see all those fabulous achievements of NASA, including some of the American government’s space exploration. It is actually worse than that. Since most of those who take part in those ventures are completely oblivious to the venality of the means by which their projects get off the ground – how their funding is secured, how it deprives millions of citizens of various amounts of wealth from which they might have produced their own more or less fabulous creations – I am not only appalled at the viciousness of these celebrations but also at the rank moral ignorance of all those who go about the celebration without a clue as to its source.
It would, indeed, be more honest to witness at least some of the folks who come on television to proclaim the wonders of these achievements if they toasted the extortionist scheme that provided them with the funding. At least we would learn that these folks are aware of what they are doing, that they are vicious but not also stupid. Instead, however, they go about their celebrations blithely, as if nothing untoward had been involved in how it all came to be achieved.
I am by no means some kind of Luddite who thinks the great leaps of technology, including space explorations, demonstrate the sin of hubris on part of the human race. No, that ignorant scientists and technologists who can stand and cheer when a brilliant payload lands on Mars and sends back stunning pictures that tell us all kinds of stuff we could make use of. It isn’t even necessary in these cases to produce immediate utilitarian results – the feats in and of themselves, like those of other human adventures, are often sufficient to cause delight for most decent people.
However, when one knows that these feats are produced on the backs of millions of tax payers – folks from whom wealth is confiscated at the point of a gun, ultimately, and who might very well have had vital objectives to pursue with the aid of their wealth and were cruelly deprived of this – there is no way to take part in all the hoopla. In fact, witnessing the morally blind pride exhibited by all those scientists, engineers, and administrators is quite painful. I must deny myself the joy I know I would feel if the accomplishments had not had been fueled by blood money.
But, perhaps I am odd. When I run across the so called marvels of past civilizations in Europe and elsewhere, such as the palaces, cathedrals, pyramids, great walls, and magnificent monuments, I find it difficult not to reflect on the deliberate, utterly avoidable human devastation that it took to get many of these artifacts produced. I always ask myself how things would have gone had all those people who were conscripted to labor on all these wondrous creations had the chance to choose their own projects.
I realize, of course, that they would probably have squandered a good deal of their lives and resources but, then, I recall that their conscripted labor and resources also went to waste a good deal of the time – in the service of wars of conquest, subjugation or confiscation, or of idolatry and frivolity. And then I recall, too, that while perhaps some of these products of forced labor, just as the recent Mars landing of the unmanned space craft, were wonderful and even helpful, we will never know how it would have gone had individuals been left free to determine to what end to devote their own labors and resources.
And, of course, it is also worth keeping in mind that many of the fabulous achievements resulting from conscripted mass labor created environmental destruction, too, which the less grandiose, more modest voluntary projects of individuals and small groups of freely united humans tended to avoid. (Just think of TVA, the Interstate Highway System, the massive canal projects and damns around the globe.)
But, yes, some of these projects are wonderful. They are only made not so by the fact that their creation violated the most elementary principle of civilized human association, freedom of choice.
January 16, 2004
Tibor Machan [send him mail] holds the Freedom Communications Professorship of Free Enterprise and Business Ethics at the Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University, CA. A Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, he is author of 20+ books, most recently, The Passion for Liberty (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).
Not all that much more complicated. A conservative believes in constutionally limited government and spending and taxation to support those things explicitly authorized by the constitution. I see nothing in the constitution that authorizes the space program, and there is a social agenda attached - it's called corporate welfare. But, at least yours was the most logical response
He is just full of himself and believes his opinion is the only opinion, period.
He's a lot like the Clintons, Kennedys, Dean, Kerry and the other usual DemocRATic suspects. They too feel their words come straight from the burning bush... Sorry, W... and anyone on the other side is a card carrying child of Hitler.
So, let "from occupied ga" post to himself and soon, like a fire in a vacuum, he will wither away to nothing.
Well isn't that special. There isn't any doubt in my mind that you have an inflated view of yours. Since you are obviously one of those intellectually challenged souls whose idea of discussion is to lead off with an insult to the messenger because you lack the mental ability to assail the message, frankly my dear I don't give a damn what you think.
It wasn't a very friendly thing to do, I have to admit. But anyone who has the cheek to suggest that if only he could be put in charge for a few minutes, all the accumulated ills of the world would be fixed, has it coming.
Awww, Is 'ems still mad about the whuppin' you got the other day?
It just keeps getting better and better. If you had bothered to try comprehending what I was saying you would have realized I was using that as an example of what I would get rid of in government spending. Refresh my memory. Show me where I said I could
"fix all of the accumulated ills of the world"because I don't remember saying this at all, and I'm sure I would have remembered.
Time to move on to another thread...
"fix all of the accumulated ills of the world"
because I don't remember saying this at all, and I'm sure I would have remembered.
Come; there's no need to be pedantic. What you wrote was, "Put me in charge for a week and see just how your taxes drop. NEA would last about 30 seconds. Farm appropriations about 60. EPA about 61. etc." For someone with the capability of performing those feats, fixing the accumulated ills of the world would prove no more than an afternoon's light labor.
What you really ought to do is check all the hubris at the door and re-post your original article with a little bit more humility. And please, don't bother coming back at me with the suggestion that I'm the one being arrogant for suggesting you humble yourself a bit.
You'll get proper respect from NASA before you get it from somebody on welfare or who got paid from your money to paint something obscene and call it "art".
If I could pick and choose where my money went, I would have no problem sending some of it to NASA. I have to thank them for digital cameras if nothing else (my current hobby) for pushing the technology so hard back in the 1960s/1970s so that it's now both cheap and good. That and landing on the moon - anybody who was alive back then knows how proud we were to plant the American flag on the moon while most of the world was doing good to have running water.
So, do you think that our spending on the military is welfare/wealth transfer to 18-22 year olds with no marketable skills?
2. Consider that the definition of a liberal is someone who wants to do what he considers good with someone else's money (and then ask yourself if you really think you're a conservative)
Do you think it is good that our government uses someone else's money to defend our country?
What's your problem? I'm with you dude. We should never have spent tax money to buy it. You know, like those taxes are bad things.
Money already spent. We now know that it is rocks and dust and confirmed by $820,000,000 taxpayer dollars that it is rocks and dust. Yet, the space heads aren't satisfied. Send a man to mars (well I might contribute if the man were upChuckie Schumer and the ticket was one way) to find that it's more rocks and dust. I dunno about you, but rocks, dust, ice, and frozen carbon dioxide just don't make my "spirit soar". I get a lot more "spirit soaring" out of watching my kids graduate from college (tuition ain't free) and things like that (Oh! how selfish! my actually wanting to spend the fruits of my labor on my priorities rahter than those of the space heads)
FALSE STRAW MAN ALERT
Please show me where I said the military and nasa were the same. If you had bothered read the whole thread (I realize that this is a chore) you would see that I recommended the use the constitution (quaint idea) to what is the role of government spending and what isn't. Last time I looked, the military was indeed in the constitution. NASA, however, wasn't.
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