One Small Step for Person, One Giant Leap for Personkind
The day before Thomas Fleming offered his reflections on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, I offered mine at Takimag. My focus was different from Dr. Fleming's. I used the anniversary to reflect on how and why America had declined since Neil Armstrong took that famous step onto the moon, and wished that "we could recover some of what we had in 1969, when American achievement seemed so natural."
I should have known better than to celebrate the American past. My piece came to the attention of two leftist bloggers, both of whom had the same reaction. A blogger at the Philadelphia Weekly caustically described the moon landing as a "triumph that all white men can be proud of," and said that I wrote about "the good old days, when we got to the moon and the astronauts were white dudes." The leftist who blogs at The Lost City wrote that I missed "the good old days, when astronauts were all-American, all male and all white." Significantly, my article mentioned neither race nor sex—it was enough that I praised an American accomplishment that had, in fact, been attained by white males. Since it is difficult to square achievements like Apollo 11 with an ideology that insists that "diversity is our greatest strength," one cannot be too enthusiastic about America's real past without running the risk of committing a thought crime against diversity.
I did note that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins were chosen for Apollo 11 "for the simple reason that they were the best men for the job, a criterion that today is often no longer enough, as Frank Ricci discovered. Today's NASA seems as interested in trumpeting its commitment to multiculturalism and diversity as in the exploration of space, a commitment that would have struck the men who actually planned and achieved multiple landings on the moon as simply irrelevant to what they were doing." Neither leftist disputed the truth of what I wrote: The Philadelphia Weekly blogger conceded that "America's first astronauts may well have been the best men for the job" and The Lost City blogger agreed that "Certainly Armstrong and Aldrin were the best test pilots and fighter pilots of their day."
To my leftist critics, though, my skepticism of affirmative action was not just evidence of thought crime, it revealed my ignorance of what the leftist commitment to diversity is all about. As the Philadelphia Weekly blogger wrote, "The point is not to let any person strap themselves into an Apollo module merely for the sake of having a Skittles rainbow of colors in outer space; it's to ensure that all qualified people—no matter their race or gender—have such opportunities, and that people who have historically lacked the opportunity to get qualifications get that opportunity." And besides, The Lost City blogger noted, the example of astronaut Eileen Collins shows that today's NASA is every bit as good as the NASA of Armstrong, Aldrin, and Michael Collins. (One wonders why The Lost World blogger did not rhapsodize instead about female astronaut Lisa Nowak, who last made the news when she was arrested for attempting to kidnap another female astronaut whom she saw as the rival for a male astronaut's attention, while wearing a trench coat and wig and equipped with a BB gun, pepper spray, latex gloves, rubber tubing, garbage bags, an 8" folding knife, and diapers.)
I know that I could never do what Eileen Collins has done, and would like to believe that she was selected to be an astronaut for the same reason the Apollo 11 crew were, but one of the principal defects of affirmative action is that, unfortunately, it creates doubts about whether excellence was the reason for advancement under it. Especially when NASA administrators make comments like Deputy Administrator Shana Dale, who marked Women's History Month in March 2006 by quoting the NASA Administrator as saying, "When I travel around NASA, I see a work force that looks like a profile of our Nation, and I am certainly going to do everything I can to make sure that it continues to be that way." The NASA Administrator's comments came in response to a question about whether NASA "had any concerted efforts to ensure that the new employees coming on board are of a diverse nature." Dale added that NASA is "strongly committed to maintaining and increasing the diversity of NASA as we recruit [our] workforce" and noted that "In addition to what we can do at the top of the agency to encourage diversity at NASA, there is so much that can be done at every level to advance this goal." This is not the single-minded commitment to excellence that characterized Apollo 11. It's a commitment that leads, at worst, to discrimination against white men to achieve a "Skittles rainbow of colors in outer space" and, at best, to the diversion of resources that could better be used in NASA's core scientific endeavors.
Thanks to NASA's commitment to diversity, employees at NASA facilities are encouraged by the "Diversity Management Office" to attend lectures on "The Color Line Revisited: Is Racism Dead?" and the like as the agency annually observes Black History Month, Women's History Month, and National American Indian Heritage Month. This year, NASA noted that 1969 was more than the year of Apollo 11, it was also the year "when patrons of the Stonewall Inn in New York City resisted police harassment that was all too common for members of the LGBT community during that era." This tidbit was shared with all NASA employees on June 8, 2009, when acting Administrator Christopher J. Scolese declared June "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month" at NASA, and encouraged NASA employees to "participate in the activities planned at your NASA center . . . for LGBT Pride Month" and to "[t]ake time to learn about the contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans, and celebrate the diversity that helped shape and strengthen NASA and our nation."
This commitment to diversity also causes NASA to be ashamed of its own past. Mr. Scolese would no doubt take a dim view of any astronaut today who talked about a "small step for man" and "giant leap for mankind." Indeed, the outside of the NASA research center in Cleveland contains a decorative border spelling out "For the Benefit of All," with a blank spot where the letters that used to spell out "Mankind" have been removed. One wonders how many blank spots will be left in our history books after they are fully conformed to leftist ideology, and if forty years from now students will know more about the Stonewall riot than they do about Apollo 11 and the America that gave birth to that remarkable achievement.
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“The point is not to let any person strap themselves into an Apollo module merely for the sake of having a Skittles rainbow of colors in outer space; it’s to ensure that all qualified people—no matter their race or gender—have such opportunities, and that people who have historically lacked the opportunity to get qualifications get that opportunity.”
This most certainly is not "the point" for leftists. What if they have the same opportunity, go through the same training, take the same test and all the astronauts happen to be the wrong color?
Well, as Mr. Piatak said in his Takimag article, ask Frank Ricci about that.
The difference between Apollo 11 and NASA today is that the Moon Shot was considered something of utmost national priority in the struggle with the Soviets (even though, as I pointed out in my comments on Dr. Fleming's article, along with the Great Society and the Vietnam War, it helped bankrupt the country). So there was no affirmative action or diversity nonsense. Just a focus on winning the Space Race.
Today, NASA and its projects are just playthings for the bureaucrats and politicians. So who cares about them? Nothing really is at stake.
The same thing with war. Up through World War II, wars were considered essential to national survival, so American leaders went all out to win. Korean and Nam were less-important "conflicts" that concluded without victory. And today's wars are so inessential -- albeit still deadly and costly -- that we even send girls to fight.
Louis XVI advanced the Glory of France and the humiliation of the British by helping the American revolutionaries, in so doing bankrupting his country, sparking the French Revolution, and getting his head lopped off in a guillotine.
During the 1960s, something similar happened to America, to the sound of worse music.
Very true - and depressing - observations.
What's also interesting to note is that almost all other space programs are tinted with ethnic pride. Just talk to the Indians or Chinese about their own space programs.
I'm curious if Mr. Piatak has read Tom Wolfe's *The Right Stuff*?
Toward the end Wolfe specifically addresses this issue -- vis-a-vis the Ed Dwight case, it turns out that PC & AA were with the space program almost from the very beginning.
According to "The History Makers", the reason Ed Dwight never made a flight is because he faced "severe discrimination from other astronauts" and "government officials created a threatening atmosphere" for him following the death of his divine patron JFK.
Wolfe tells a somewhat different story.
Mr. Salyer,
Thanks. You are right, Wolfe says that the Kennedy Administration applied political pressure for Ed Dwight to be admitted into the space program, but he never became an astronaut. Wolfe also writes this with respect to the Dwight case, which has some relevance to the discussion: "The whole thing was baffling. On the upper reaches of the great ziggarut the subject of race had never been introduced before. The unspoken premise was that you either had the right stuff or you didn't, and no other variable mattered."
Indeed. It's interesting how two entirely alternative versions of events have branched off from the Dwight case. One is that Dwight was unjustly discriminated against and that "Bobby" Kennedy had to intervene to ensure justice was done.
The other is that only the top 11 out of the 26 members of Dwight's class made the cut to continue on in training, and Dwight wasn't one of them.
Hence the Air Force ponied up more training funds so that more pilots could be passed; since Dwight couldn't make the cut, there was no cut.
Chuck Yeager -- who was head of the aerospace test pilot school -- had some interesting commentary on the matter:
"The White House, Congress, and civil rights groups came at me with meat cleavers, and the only way I could save my head was to prove I wasn't a damned bigot....
The Kennedy administration, especially Bobby Kennedy, went to the Air Force and said, 'I want a colored guy in the space program.'
LeMay said, 'I have a hornet's nest back here, and they want a black guy.'
I said, 'Well General, you know this is all published, and open and aboveboard.'
He said, 'Don't tell me problems; tell me solutions.'"
So Yeager came up with the idea of passing everybody in the course, and then letting NASA have the politically hot-potato of deciding who they wanted to take into the astronaut program.
Yeager described Dwight as
"an average pilot with an average academic background.... He was a nice guy, but he was just not qualified to be in the school. It was primer stuff for Dwight. Basically, he could not hack the program. All of the staff tutored him and tried like mad. It was a shame."
"Dwight said we were picking on him. There was none of that. He wasn't aware of everything that went on in the school. In fact, the guys on the staff busted their butts to try to get him through the course, and it just didn't work."
Of course Yeager's own status and success are clearly the result of his overprivileged, elite-white-country-clubber background...
This is one of the finest posts by Mr. Piatak. He shows that what seems a rather small ideological goal of the left can have serious and lasting consequences.
"One wonders how many blank spots will be left in our history books after they are fully conformed to leftist ideology, and if forty years from now students will know more about the Stonewall riot than they do about Apollo 11 and the America that gave birth to that remarkable achievement."
#2 "Today, NASA and its projects are just playthings for the bureaucrats and politicians. So who cares about them? Nothing really is at stake."
I tend rather to agree with Cardinal John Henry Newman's belief in the value of knowledge for its own sake. Every expenditure need not have a practical outcome to be valuable. If that were not true, we would probably have fewer museums and symphony orchestras.
Before we landed on the moon, there was a manned spy program (dressed as a crucial science program) called MOL. This program was just featured on TV the other night. The TV show was more focused around the facts and development of the program rather than any politics or cultural aspects, but it was interesting to see that the first black astronaut, Robert H. Lawrence, Jr., was actually here.
Despite being on PBS, nothing was made of his blackness, other than the artifact of him being the first. He was killed in action during a training exercise. He was highly regarded by the other astronauts interviewed as one of the best, if not the best, pure pilot among them. He had a PhD in Chemistry.
It might be presumptuous or accurate to guess that Mr. Lawrence wouldn't have needed a squawk from Bobby Kennedy to make the cut, had he survived. One wonders about the effects, possibly killing AA in its crib, had there coincidentally been more, qualified black men with the right stuff in the right places at the right times.
I also haven't been following the current NASA missions with too much interest, but I did see that the first Tweet was sent from space, and that the astronauts were busy answering questions from teenagers like how do they go to the bathroom and what happens if you sneeze in your space suit?
Perhaps NASA will continue at least to contribute accidentally useful inventions like water filters, cordless power tools, shoe insoles, smoke detectors, ear thermometers, memory foam, scratch resistant lenses, and invisible braces. I just hope Skittles don't start falling from the sky.
I was once informed by one highly informed that the term/ word "racist" did not exist prior to 1960.
Having searched only two pre-60's sources I was interested to see, at least in two instances, this was true. Is it?
It has always fascinated me to find that the culturally dominant zeitgeist dictates diction.
#8:
Had the White House, Kennedy, etc., been willing to do things the right way -- instead of demanding instant political gratification -- they probably could have found some real potential astronaut candidates.
In addition to Major Lawrence, there was a black fighter pilot by the name of Emmett Hatch -- who had flown with Yeager and whom Yeager actually thought would have excelled in the program. (In reminiscences Hatch spoke highly of Yeager as well, BTW.)
But for whatever reason Maj Hatch "didn't want to get involved" with the astronaut program, and wound up flying in Vietnam instead.
#2. So Tom/s article is about nothing! Will you ever stop churning incoherent comments while totally missing the point? Why do you think that your insights are so valuable that you have to share it with the panel? You have said absolutely nothing useful. Since you did not get Tom's point here is the short version: Space program is great and we should be proud of it.
It's only a matter of time until NASA celebrates Retarded Dimwit Month. Then all America will learn of the contributions made by 65 IQ liberals, and other assorted parasites with loud mouths. As the sneering Tom Lehrer once said, "it's now illegal to discriminate on the grounds of ability."
@11 Jack
Perhaps the space program was great at one time. The TV shows were sponsored by Gulf. However, I don't see it that way any more. Today the program is more about fulling some goofy Star Trek pipe dream, and its multi-culti. The Space Station will be a huge money pit in the sky (as if we had real money to throw up there). Mars missions have no potential benefit for the cost, and Moon settlements more of the same. Getting (white men) to the Moon was quite a feat in its day, but in today's PC climate it won't happen again because we've lost our national will.
*fulfilling