Lunacy: Our State Religion
Americans, apparently, have nothing else to think about but the Moon Walk and the Madonna concert that have occupied so much of the front pages of newspapers—or what is left of them—and news websites. Of Madonna and the victim of her collapsing stage, all I can say is that the the photographs of the ungracefully aging exotic dancer should be enough to kill anyone who likes women.
Of the Moon Walk, I well remember that warm July day in 1969. I was back in Charleston, after spending time in graduate school, and I was revolted by the hype. Astronauts are undoubtedly brave men and occasionally quite resourceful, but in riding a bullet into space they can hardly be compared to the thousands and thousands of brave men and women who explored and settled the American frontier. Though we had not yet learned to chant, "U-S-A! U-S-A!, we were already, back in '69, a nation of chest-pounding braggarts who could not distinguish between real soldiers, cowboys, and physicians and the people who play them on TV.
I was even more disgusted by the religious zeal with which Americans celebrated the technological conquest of space. Who knows, I heard even back then, we might someday discover life on Mars or Venus. Well, what if we did? I did not understand, back then, that the subtext of so much science fiction and the glamorization of space lay in the challenge that undereducated atheists thought it presented to Christianity. If there is life on Mars, this disproves Genesis, disproves the Christian notion that man is at the center of Creation, debunks the fable that God became man and died for our sins.
There is, of course, a theological opinion that holds that extraterrestrial life is impossible, but I have never much believed in it. Frankly, the Being who created everything out of nothing can pretty much do anything He wants to, and it is not up to me or to hundreds of brilliant theologians to exclude the possibility. In any case, it is a serious mistake for Christians to pin their hopes—much less their faith—on somebody's scientific theory of generations past. Young Earthians and Flat Earthians alike make this mistake, treating the Old Testament as a science textbook and reducing the miracle of Creation to a numbers game.
I frankly don't much care what they find in "Outer Space," whether it is fungus, "The Thing," or the insufferable liberal Klaatu, come to save us from our violence. (They should have plugged him the moment he started his sermon!) What I do know is that I resent NASA's violation of the most sacred principle inserted into the Constitution by lying liberals, the non-existent "Separation of Church and State." Christians are forced to pay their tithe to a program, one of whose fundamental purposes is the destruction of our religion. Next, they'll be forcing me to pay taxes to subsidize sex education in the anti-Christian government schools. (Please, oh youth of America, do not write in to reveal to me that this is already happening.)
Of course, neither the brave astronauts nor the people in mission control had any such agenda in mind. Indeed, though it was not known at the time, Buzz Aldrin took communion on the moon—the first human food consumed on another world—by eating bread and drinking wine his Presbyterian pastor had blessed. Aware of a Madalyn Murray O'Hair suit against NASA—the Apollo 8 team had read from Genesis--he kept quiet about the celebration. It would have been a beautiful moment for a Christian nation, but we were already being held hostage by the enemies of Christendom. In the America we live in today, a supposedly Catholic university had to cover up all Christian images to avoid offending the Obama.
In July of 1969 I had already more or less realized in what direction the country was being taken by its leaders. What should I have done? Gone to Cape Kennedy—as I believe we called it then—to protest? Refuse to pay, a la Joan Baez, the portion of my taxes that goes to NASA? Run for Dog Catcher on the slogan, "Keep your damned hands off the moon!"?
What I did, in fact, was to organize a beach party at Sullivan's Island. We ate and drank and recited poems—one of them written by me—that memorialized the beauty of the moon. "Regarde la lune..." "This lunar beauty has no history..." "With how sad steps, oh moon, thou climb'st the skies!/ How silently and with how wan a face...."
A stupid, futile gesture? Of course it was. It was meant to be. But we had a wonderful time, and some of my friends were listening to Philip Sidney and W.H. Auden for the first time in their lives. Most important of all, several pretty girls were impressed. To quote another poet, "Obla dee, obla da, life goes on."
Entries(RSS)
I liked "The Thing" (the 50's one with James Arness, not the disgusting 80's version by John Carpenter). The liberal-weenie scientist gets smashed by Arness for being, well, a liberal weenie.
Columnist Charlie Reese once wrote that America has been an open air insane asylum since the 60's.
Space exploration as a covert attack on Christianity: you've really outdone yourself this time, Dr. Fleming
"Astronauts are undoubtedly brave men and occasionally quite resourceful, but in riding a bullet into space they can hardly be compared to the thousands and thousands of brave men and women who explored and settled the American frontier."
As Tom Wolfe's *The Right Stuff* points out, a lot of the old-school test pilots felt much the same way about the idea of riding as a passive passenger in a pod. Aviation has gone steadily downhill from the days of Antoine de St. Exupery and Lindbergh.
Of course spaceflight has declined as well; whatever Dr. Fleming may have perceived in the moon landing is far, far worse in the modern-day NASA. At least in the old days there was something of a military ethic, along with flyboy machismo, along with a serious sense of cosmic destiny (however misguided). The spirit of today's space program is about as inspiring and grand as an Al Gore speeches about polar bears.
F. Devlin: The thesis of spaceflight as a surrogate-religion should be apparent to anyone who's seen footage from a Star Trek convention. Or Star Trek itself, for that matter -- whether in its original form or in the endless, increasingly metrosexual incarnations.
As a former member of the National Space Society who majored in aeronautics, I can assure you that a great many people regard Boldly Going Where No Man Has Gone Before as the final cause of homo sapiens.
(Er, excuse me -- I meant, where no *one* has gone before.)
Boy, did you nail on with this article. I have never been all that obsessed about space, although it was interesting sitting in my best friend's house in 1969 and watching the moon landing. It seems to reflect the very common attitude in our culture that power is everything, morality nothing. If we CAN do it we SHOULD do it. If we can kill children in the womb we should; if I can rape you I should, etc. However, I do think your solution was much more effective than you suggest. In the light of bailouts, takeovers, and the most massive power grab of the feds ever, I think a few beach parties would go a long way to restoring sanity. Not really, but I never pass up a chance for a beach party.
Looks like I have already started the drinking portion of the beach party. I meant to say, "...did you nail IT..." not on.
And I always thought our national religion was Shopping. But you are right. I remember when Nixon declared that some space junket or other was the greatest thing that ever happened in history. I suppose he didn't remember about the Son of God.
Perhaps, as a good friend of mine has written, any space mission on which there is a notion of an eventual return to Earth, i.e. is ultimately earth-bound in both senses of that word, is but an extension of the Tower of Babel. We know exactly what God thought of that.
"There is, of course, a theological opinion that holds that extraterrestrial life is impossible, but I have never much believed in it. Frankly, the Being who created everything out of nothing can pretty much do anything He wants to, and it is not up to me or to hundreds of brilliant theologians to exclude the possibility."
Can't argue with that paragraph. Viewed apart from their allegory, C.S. Lewis's classics "Out of the Silent Planet" and "Perelandra" what-iffed the metaphysical and theological implications of other worlds' intelligent inhabitants--not yet touched by Earth-borne Original Sin--being confronted by sinful Earthlings. It's an intriguing "what-if" that is scientifically plausible only because sub-lightspeed space travel is known to be possible.
Since the book was written, we are now reasonably sure that both Mars and Venus have no life of any kind upon them and never did.
That leaves very deep space as the possible location of other beings created by God in His image and likeness. But our ever making contact with any such appears to be impossible, except in science fiction.
No doubt better for them, if indeed they're out there.
My parents and paternal grandparents always wondered what the benefit of space exploration was anyway. They liked the spectacle of it, but they always thought that it was a big waste of tax dollars. To them it was just another huge folly, and the benefits in technology which came from it weren't that important to them, not enough so to justify the huge cost.
In later years, my father sometimes said the same things about the space race as he did about the Vietnam war and Korea, such as: 'What was it all for?', 'What was it worth?', 'What was the point of it?'.
Maybe I'm going against the inspiration of Dr. Fleming's poetic post by quoting figures. But the Moon Shot, which I reveled in as a young boy -- I once cut Saturday catechism to watch a Gemini launch -- cost $10 billion. Factoring inflation and population growth, that would be about $300 billion today -- real money even during these days of Bush-Obama trillion-dollar-plus bailouts.
Along with the LBJ Great Society and Nam, the Moon Shot bankrupted the country, and we really haven't recovered.
I recently pointed out to an incredulous 10-year-old child of some friends that, when I was her age in 1965, almost all cars in America were made here, and Japanese vehicle imports were Tonka Toys.
Well, I guess there's all those moon rocks in the government's National Air and Space Museum in the Imperial City.
Soon they'll be auctioned to Chinese capitalists.
And in a classic case of post hoc ergo propter hoc: the lunar lander was designed to settle into billions of year's worth of dust build-up. NASA expected a lot more the half-inch shown in the famous footprint photo. This refutation of accepted science pleased the Young Earth crowd no end.
And if there is intelligent life on other planets, they probably know better than to stay away from this cesspool of selfish stupidity. Earthlings' future is more accurately depicted in the movie Idiocracy.
@3 JD
The space program has indeed gone downhill. Nowadays it's little more than a globalist program to celebrate diversity. The first lesbian negress is probably in training right now, and down the road will be the first Transvestite Wiccan astronaut. After that who knows what abomination wil be tossed in our faces? Somebody once said in the pages of Chronicles that the taxpayers spent $10 billion to place a dozen government employees on the moon, compared with the politically correct bilge touting space exploration today, that seems like a bargain.
"Along with the LBJ Great Society and Nam, the Moon Shot bankrupted the country, and we really haven’t recovered."
I thought that was just blowing the surplus built up after the war, and that the real indebtedness came with Reagan's real arms build-up + fake/failed social services/entitlements cuts, compounded by Bush I and Clinton's pump and dump scams.
@12, Mr. Collins:
There was no surplus built up after the war. Although FDR, after stupidly devaluing the dollar in 1934 ($22 to $35), for once showed economic sense and kept the dollar at $35, even through World War II. That meant the immense war debt (120% of GDP) could be paid off with 2% interest.
The national debt was gradually being paid off, down to 35% of GDP under Carter, until it rose to 70% under Reagan, dropped to 60% under Clinton, and now under Bush-Obama has risen to 80%.
But debt isn't the whole story; debt decreased during the "malaise" 1970s, but rose under the Reagan boom years. Obsession with the debt is the hallmark of "Root-Canal Republicans" like Bob Dole, who in the U.S. Senate pushed through $900 billion in tax increases, earning him the nickname "Tax Collector for the Welfare State."
Even more important is what Robert Higgs calls "regime uncertainty." Is the government a) helping businesses grow and create jobs by keeping the currency stable and reducing taxes and regulations; or b)hammering businesses with inflation and wild new spending coupled with new taxes and regulations?
After LBJ's 1964 landslide, he and the Democratic Congress did b). They went on a spending binge on his Great Society socialist schemes. The cost of them, over the years, has been immense -- tens of trillions of dollars. In 1965, he escalated the Vietnam War, eventually putting 550,000 troops in Nam. The total cost of the war (1965-1973) was $100 billion then, about $3 trillion today factoring inflation and population growth -- about the same cost of the Iraq War (so far).
With the federal budget buckling, in 1968 LBJ pushed through a 10% income tax surtax that brought on a recession. He and the Fed also began inflating the currency -- the usual government tactic of cheating people by paying them with money actually worth less than what's written on the bills.
The recession, Nam, Great Society welfarism, riots, and the whole mess of 1968 brought us Nixon. If he had had any sense, he would have demanded that Congress make the Vietnam War legit by declaring war; Congress would not have done so, so he could have ended it posthaste, saving about half the final cost in lives (58,000 Americans dead, 3.2 million Viets dead) and treasure. He didn't. He should have fought LBJ's Great Society. He didn't, instead funding and expanding it (for example, with affirmative action).
And he should have ended the inflation by returning to a rock-solid gold standard at $35 an ounce. Instead, in 1971 as part of his New Economic Policy (same name as Lenin's), he took us off gold for the first time under the Constitution (except for Lincoln's greenbacks). He also increased taxes and tariffs.
So, add up the LBJ-Nixon spending binge, in today's adjusted dollars: $3 trillion for Nam, $300 billion for the Moon Shot, tens of trillions for the Great Society.
In addition ... if I may go on a little more ... in 1972 Congress indexed Socialist Security to the inflation rate, with Nixon's backing. Except the index was to the cost-of-living rate, NOT to wages -- a completely idiotic thing to do. The result is that at times like these in 2009, when jobs are dying and pay is stagnant, oldsters still get a cost-of-living increase in Socialist Security -- 5.8% for this year.
The 1970s were the Malaise. Reagan stabilized the dollar, cut taxes and regulations for a few years and sparked growth. Bush I was a disaster. Clinton was a disaster for his first 2 years in office, then for his next 6 years, ever slick, actually cut taxes and was not too bad on spending. Bush II panicked after 9/11, inflated the currency, spent wildly on war and domestic waste, and enacted tax cuts that will expire next year.
No wonder the system is going bankrupt.
I could go on, but that's enough. Except to point out that, as in the 1970s only worse -- because now our manufacturing base is greatly eroded and the country is much less Christian -- this whole superstructure of war, deficits, debt, inflation, and wild spending is collapsing like a cheap card table. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
#6, Dr. Wilson:
You are right. I looked up the quote.
When the Apollo 11 crew returned from the moon, Nixon greeted them with: "This is the greatest week in the history of the world since Creation."
It's typical of Nixon that he just happened to forget Holy Week. And the "greatest week" just happened to occur when he was Supreme Galactic Imperial Overlord.
Personally, I'm hoping that space exploration some day will bring back from Venus enough women to replace our feminists, whom we then can ship off to another galaxy far, far away.
@13, Mr. Seiler
Thanks.
@14 John
"It’s typical of Nixon that he just happened to forget Holy Week."
Well, what do you expect of a non-orthodox Quaker? When Watergate had reached his bitter end -- the night before his resignation, he asked Kissinger to pray with him, and burst into tears. He aksed Henry the K to reveal neither the prayer not the tears. More's the fool nixon to trust an unorthodox Jew. Kissinger blabbed all over Washington to the point that even Chuck Colson felt sympathy.
@13 Mr. Seiler
"In addition … if I may go on a little more … in 1972 Congress indexed Socialist Security to the inflation rate, with Nixon’s backing. Except the index was to the cost-of-living rate, NOT to wages — a completely idiotic thing to do."
Agreed, but not from a political perspective. It keeps an ever growing cowed and corraled voting bloc, guided by the aging bloodsuckers at AARP, voting the "right" way.
" I frankly don’t much care what they find in “Outer Space,” whether it is fungus, “The Thing,” or the insufferable liberal Klaatu, come to save us from our violence. (They should have plugged him the moment he started his sermon!) "
Dr. Fleming, these two sentences are priceless!
@17 Etienne.
Yes, and the Nixon-Kissinger prayer event was mocked on Saturday Night Live in a skit written by Al Franken. Who now, of course, has become a Nixonian U.S. senator -- supporting a long, unpopular war, this one in Iraq instead of Nam; the welfare state; abortion and population control; and the massively wasteful U.S. space program.
At least in 1969 NASA was somewhat competent and had a goal: the moon. Now, under Franken et al., NASA is just another pork project -- for example, for the Minnesota Space Grant Consortium at the U. of Minn.
I just noticed, on its Web site, this description: "Welcome! The Minnesota Space Grant Consortium (MnSGC) is part of the NASA Funded National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program established by Congress in 1988 [under 'small government' President Reagan]." Nationally, Space Grant is a network of 52 university-based statewide consortia (all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico) with 820 affiliates."
It's ultimate pork project. Just stuff our tax money into a nose cone and shoot it toward Alpha Centauri.
Space -- the final pork frontier.
For those who are not facebook friends with Clyde Wilson's lovely daughters, you have to see the latest update from one of them:
>> Lee Wilson had a good laugh at the Old Homeplace today. The nephew pointed to a picture of Robert E. Lee and shouted "Jesus!".
@19 John
I had not seen that skit, but heard it from Colson back in the days when Christian talk radio was still relevant. On the other hand, SNL was never funny, probably because of Franken's poor writing skills. Now that voters of the Gopher State have sort of made him their politician, I need no longer be bored either by his inane grunts or his empty-headed leftism on AM talk radio.
I wonder if the Hubble space telescope is boomeranging on the secular left, the science freaks and the Christian-haters. The Hubble should have found the mythical Big Bang(a fetish of George Will, by the way) but it has not. Before Hubble, the universe was considered 6-8 billion years old but now the Hubble points to over fourteen billion years. When will it 20 billion or 50 billion or more? Who knows, certainly not the government scientists of NASA. Maybe a better answer might be that the Lord does not choose to reveal Himself.
In restrospect, I see no reason to have gone to the moon. There was no utility in it only hubris. The cost of the space program was and is immense, a sop to all those Flash Gordon, Star Trek and Star Wars fanatics that pop culture has presented over the ages for children. Perhaps a journey to Mars would be worth it if only to send Charles Krauthammer one way with no way to e-mail his column to Earth.
@11, Etienne Gervaise:
I agree that NASA expected a massive amount of dust, thus one of the reasons for the antenna/probe protruding from the base of the lunar module. But the quarter inch or so of dust they found is demonstration to me that the moon has not been orbiting for billions of years without atmosphere, collecting space dust. I had that much dust on my living room floor before I got married.
Of course, the idea that we could tell the age of the universe by means of looking at the 'farthest distance' rests on the 'big bang' theory. If the theory isn't true, then we'll just keep looking further out for no better reason than just to see what's there.
So what if, when we look across distances of light years, we look back in time? If the big bang is not there, then it's not there, and since there was no 'time when' the universe was created because there was no time before creation, then there is no point in trying to figure out the age of the universe, since if there was no time before creation, then why conclude that time began at a certain point and then went forward from then? It makes as much sense, perhaps more, to believe that time was created running in both directions, forward and backwards, perhaps eternally, just as space was created in all directions, perhaps for infinity.
Simply put, it is a non-sequitor to believe that since looking across light years is looking backwards in time, that if we look far enough we'll see the ultimate origin of the universe. It's just a time-bound idea dreamed up by intellectuals divorced of spiritual understanding, unable to think above limited thought concepts of space-time. The effort to 'see the big bang' is as much of a wasteful folly and is as full of hubris as the moon race itself.
I see a world of difference between the heroic Apollo program and the twerpy athiests like Sagan who pushed SETI. The moon landing may be remembered in the distant future as America's pinnacle.
And I'm sure Francis Xavier, who spent his life sailing to strange new worlds, would have laughed at the notion that life on other planets would somehow disprove Christianity.
As I recall, they did plug poor Klaatu (twice!). I remember when I saw the film as a boy being shocked that the oh-so-civilized aliens would really incinerate a whole planet to punish some evildoers. Why, despite the self-righteous rhetoric, they were evil themselves!
You know what's on the moon? Rocks and dirt. You know what's on Mars? More rocks and more dirt! Any so-called conservative who is complaining about the costs of health care reform, fighting global warming and the stimulus should have their heads blown off with a cannon if they also start whining about why the U.S. doesn't have more manned space exploration (cue Newt Gingrich). Billions to look at rocks and dirt. Billons to stroke man's ego.
While landing on the moon was an impressive accomplishment and those who were a part of the space program deserve praise for their bravery and sacrifice, we must admit the "Space Race" was as much about the Cold War as much was about science. Billions were spent to beat the Russians to the moon, not "one leap for mankind." This is what drove everyone from the engineers to mission control to the astronauts themselves. Putting our flag on the moon looks nice for TV cameras and makes one feel good but to go beyond that, to try and seek some higher purpose for man will only leave you disappointed because nothing much changed after that or if did, only got worse.
Man has been able to explore the stars and the out edges of the galaxy and beyond with unmanned space probes. Our knowledge of the universe is much greater thanks to the Voyager and Mariner probes and the Viking craft and the Mars rover and the Hubble Telescope as much as been due to the Apollo and Gemini projects. And yet we wish to celebrate man physically setting foot on the moon. Why? What's the point? Just because it's there? Fine, pay for it yourself. The government doesn't subsidizes mountain climbing on Everest just because it's there, why should it subsidize moon landings or Mars exploration? Are their precious ores or minerals we can mine on the moon? Fine, pay for mining and transporting them yourselves if you can raise trillons in capital to do so. No one's stopping you. Want to live in colonies on the Moon and Mars, fine by me. You won't catch me recerating life on Earth in some artificial bubble millions of miles from home but hey, to each is own. But you will not pick my pocket for it. As the old song goes "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact it's cold as hell."
I look forward to the day more and more private dollars go into space travel and exploration so that every anniversary of the moon landing we do not have idiots like Charles Krauthammer lamenting our lack of space exploration because of man's noble need for discovery, which can be a violent and violating process as "progress". As I said, man has made many leaps in knowledge and science in more cost effective ways out of the Jet Propulsion Labratory where Cape Canaveral has given us duct tape, Tang and a footprint after billions spent. I know where I'd put my money.
I say this with no joy in my heart. But shame on all of you who wail and rant against America's landing on the Moon and glory in your willful ignorance of the event when it happened.
Mr. Scallion asks what's the point for landing on the Moon? Scientific exploration of it for one. Planning for it's permanent colonization is another. The justly earned right to rejoice in beating the Russians to it is a third. And all these as stepping stones for - Our Lord willing - the future colonization of the stars.
And ideally by private monies, not by either big government, big business or both together.
I agree with Chesterbelloc. The Apollo missions were and are heroic, as will whatever their successors are. And again, shame on all of you who think otherwise. The monies spent weren't wasted at all.
Earth is the right place for love
I don't know where it is likely to go better." RF
Of course the space program has helped us in killing the enemy with more precise targeting and global positioning devices. It was Marx who noticed that the means of production determine our ends and the nice Christians who always responded, technology in itself is neither good or evil it just all depends on how one uses it. Afterall, wasn't the material cause of Chivalry the saddle stirrup? As if Nathan Bedford Forest would have been nothing if not an excellent horsemen. Imagine what the Sioux Indians might have accomplished against General Custard at Little Big Horn if only they had read Marx or rode with stirrups. When archeologists dig in our rubble and garbage dumps they will say,"They consumed in large quantity like elephants and dinosaurs with little evidence of any human quality."
In July of 1969, my friends and I were bleeding in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and didn't give a damn about moonshots; it was gunshots concerned us, lots of them. But if anyone would like to know about that time imaginatively, he should read Norman Mailer's "Of a Fire on the Moon." A great and underappreciated piece of literature that makes the connection between the above events.
What a discussion. We have men with earned Phd degrees who believe we never went there. Why has no other country or group of countries flown up there?
Writing from Attica, not far offshore from Salamis, I would suggest to Roy F. Moore that crying shame is not the same as making a rational argument. I said, in my little essay, that the Astronauts were men of courage. But that is hardly the issue.Terrorists are typically brave men who kill themselves in carrying out their ideals. Nonetheless, I would not make a cult of Mohammed Atta. Rem tene.
Are you kidding, Mr. Kornkven? Who told you that the moon shot was a fake- Bishop Williamson? I am aghast. What next was faked? Lindbergh's flight over the Atlantic? Hillary's ascent of Everest? Becket's murder at Canterbury? Inquiring people want to know.