Tuesday, August 04, 2009

The Shuttle and the USA

We launch our shuttles like subconscious twitches. We barely know they happen at all. Most of us don't know. We are such a monstrosity, an elephantine republic, where simple minded people mingle with the thinkers. Where some people can still laughably cling to the nobly savage idea of small government. "Small" has never been a word to be used in any way shape or form to describe any aspect of America.

We were waged war against England to gain our Independence. Then we waged war against our former alley France to attain our freedom on the seas. We told powers vastly more powerful they us to stay away from "our" hemisphere when a handful of cities in Europe contained more people than our whole nation.

Small has never been an American trait. While the great powers sat bickering in Europe we cut Panama in two, taking over the job started by Europeans. While Hitler struggled against Russia we waged global war on every continent. While the Germans tried in vane to destroy London, we obliterated metropolis after metropolis. Japan bombed a navel base so we destroyed their capital city along with dozens of others.

We damned hundreds of rivers. Built millions of miles of railroads, highways, electrical lines, gas pipelines, hundreds of thousands of oil wells, and an economy that made money in the trillions.

As Jim Lovell said. Going to the Moon was not a miracle. We just decided to go. When war was suicidal we opted to outspend our enemies. We spent Russia into the ground. And when a handful of terrorists attacked a couple buildings we brought misery to the middle east a thousand times over.

Yes I find the people who labor for "small" America to be laughable. Don't they know where they live? Don't they understand America? No obviously not.