tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990917746447852116.post5977920190577370501..comments2023-09-27T02:30:06.543-07:00Comments on Hoov's First Amendment: Of Spacewalks, and Debt, and Near Death at the Home Run DerbyGreg Hooverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00268286257051964998noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4990917746447852116.post-77130460479533523312011-07-12T20:00:58.263-07:002011-07-12T20:00:58.263-07:00I totally get your sense of dissonance over the ne...I totally get your sense of dissonance over the news of the week, and our completely out-of-kilter national priorities. I have mixed emotions about the end of the shuttle program. I lament the loss of the can-do spirit of the Apollo program, and I wish we could invest more in science for science's sake (and art for art's sake) than we do ... but to be honest, we didn't go to the moon for science's sake. The Apollo program would never have happened if it wasn't considered a (paramilitary) case of national security. <br /><br />50 years ago we were the greatest country in the world, economically, militarily, and probably morally ... but we were motivated by the very real, existential threat of not just falling to number two, but being annihilated. (Of course, our adversary also faced an existential threat, courtesy of ours truly.) Thirty years ago we abrogated our arms limitation treaties with that adversary, and spent them into bankruptcy. Twenty years after winning the Cold War, we're spending almost as much on our military than the rest of the world combined, and we think we can't afford a space program. <br /><br />More mixed emotions: this topic reinforces a recent observation that the USA is still the best at being the best, but we're not very good at being very good. Almost all of the best universities in the world are in the US, public and private alike; but the results of our public K-12 system fall between Lithuania and Uganda. We're the best place in the world to need brain surgery; but if you just want to survive childbirth, you're better off in 40 other countries. We have the world's largest and best military, but we don't feel safe. We're still the wealthiest nation on earth, but we're talking about defaulting on our obligations rather than give up having among the lowest **effective** tax rates in the western world. <br /><br />I'm not trying to argue with you, Hoov. I'm writing out of the same sense of malaise and lost promise that you are, and I'm not sure what I'm suggesting as an ameliorative. And I'm also not one to say that EVERYTHING is worse now than it was 30 or 50 years ago. Our daughters have more options than their mothers and grandmothers ever did, for instance. <br /><br />I guess the commonality in our mutual lamentations is this:<br /><br />I wish we, as a country and a culture, had a purpose in common more important than that third meaningless flyball that we're all willing to risk oblivion to put into our back pocket ...J. Ronald Newlinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11230263507068250893noreply@blogger.com