One Giant Leap To Nowhere

by Tom Wolfe - July 18th, 2009 - New York Times

The American space program, the greatest, grandest, most Promethean — O.K. if I add “godlike”? — quest in the history of the world, died in infancy at 10:56 p.m. New York time on July 20, 1969, the moment the foot of Apollo 11’s Commander Armstrong touched the surface of the Moon.

This article, from the socialist rag known as the New York Times, has actually summed up much of the pain I feel about our nation. We have lost our souls and the ability to dream. The majority no longer believe in either the exceptionalism of our nation or the exceptionalism of man. For what else does American exceptionalism represent except a metaphor of greatness for this sentient animal knows as mankind.

Today America is dying as the growing majority of whiny me-me-me greedy grabbers demand the right to take from anyone else what they want to take. "I deserve a heart transplant just for existing." It doesn't matter that I have never worked a day in my life. Health care is a "fundamental" right and thus someone else must pay for my heart transplant. How about the "rich". Make them pay.

Sounds good until you realize that there are not enough rich. And there is this funny thing. Since most rich have worked really hard for what they have, they don't fancy having the lazy just take it from them. Our youth have no plans to work hard for anything. They plan to simply take what they want by voting for it.

That brings us back to the space program. Where today is the genius dreamer who can point out the need to worry about mankind's future. From the article:

The fact was, NASA had only one philosopher, Wernher von Braun. Toward the end of his life, von Braun knew he was dying of cancer and became very contemplative. I happened to hear him speak at a dinner in his honor in San Francisco. He raised the question of what the space program was really all about.

It’s been a long time, but I remember him saying something like this: Here on Earth we live on a planet that is in orbit around the Sun. The Sun itself is a star that is on fire and will someday burn up, leaving our solar system uninhabitable. Therefore we must build a bridge to the stars, because as far as we know, we are the only sentient creatures in the entire universe. When do we start building that bridge to the stars? We begin as soon as we are able, and this is that time. We must not fail in this obligation we have to keep alive the only meaningful life we know of.

That would be true if our youth and culture cared about anything but today. The future, grand ideas, surviving the death of our planet? These are not things we worry about any more. Me-me-me. That has become the only focus of our culture. Selfish idiots who can not contribute to anything because they know nothing. These now control our world. And even those who believe in God are fantasizing about the end times of man in the Apocalypse, not our future. It is all about them going to heaven (and their neighbor not going because he dares to disagree with the "infallible" bible). Our culture doesn't dream because we no longer have the intellectual curiosity to dream.

If the New York Times can see that, how hard can it be?