Random Thoughts on a Friday Evening

When I started this space advocacy thing, I was already doing a lot of philosophical and historical reading—Aristotle, Toynbee, Rand, what have you—but one thing that surprised me was how philosophical pro-space literature is: The Case for Mars, The High Frontier, etc. Heinlein, Zubrin, O’Neill, and the others have a vision of humanity that is often more lofty and courageous than our current age would seem to inspire. This has led me, unsurprisingly, to yet more reading.

We often have to ask ourselves: who are we as a people? Or, more selfishly: who am I? What kind of person am I? What kind of person do I want to be?

So I’ve done yet more reading: Cicero, Kipling, the King James Bible, Kissinger, Bobbitt, Pournelle, history, philosophy, space stuff, religion, biography, pop culture sociology. And then, of course, I have my daily interactions with non-literary people in person and via email. Occasionally, when I can stomach it, I watch the TV news. The more I read, the more I am convinced of the following:

• People are inherently fallen, subject to temptation, greed, lust, ill temper, violence, gossip, shortsightedness, foolishness, and power-seeking. And I include myself in that category 100%.
• The best thing I can prescribe is that individuals and groups act under a similar creed: if someone’s behavior is not causing you harm, leave them the hell alone. Of course that sort of libertarian thought is not likely to be practiced. Otherwise, laws wouldn’t be enforced, nor, most likely, would religions be spread, regardless of their goodness.
• Religions seem blind to the possibilities or potential of space exploration and settlement. This is mostly because they—and I mean here Protestant Christian sects, I cannot speak for others—prefer that their followers focus on the next world. A friend of mine suggested the other day that “we needed a new church.” I’m not so sure. Roman Catholicism at least believes in practicing good works in this life. Would improving living conditions worldwide and offering the potential for new freedoms qualify as good works?
• I suggested to my pastor and vicar, very gently of course, that space exploration offers us a chance to better learn about God’s creation. And, indeed, the more we see of the universe’s vastness, the more humbled we may become. I don’t hold with the scientific (liberal?) view that the size of the universe is proof-positive of how insignificant we are. On the contrary! If life is truly so rare, then we should treasure it as never before, and marvel that we have brains to comprehend it at all. I haven’t made much progress with either camp on these views.
• Another argument I suggested to the vicar (this discussion quickly eluded or bored my pastor) was: “Isn’t space technology worthwhile if it is used to stop an asteroid that kills all life on Earth?” I was told, more or less, that if God wanted to smack us down like that, that was his privilege; likewise, if he felt it was within his mercy to grant us the intelligence to achieve such a mission, that was fine, too. Again, I was cautioned against focusing too much on this world and not enough on the next. Yeah, but while I’m here, shouldn’t I try to do everything in my power to help my fellow man? I left the church for about 20 years because of its hostility to science fiction. It doesn’t seem to be much more welcoming to science fact, either. I draw my moral and spiritual precepts from Christianity, but most of my daily-life inspiration comes from outer space, which God created. I’m sure I’m going to hell for that in some people’s minds.
• We are in for a long war with Islam. Wouldn’t space colonies provide excellent sanctuaries and places for preserving Western Civilization, especially if Europe actually becomes “Eurabia,” as Bat Ye’or suggests? Some Europeans, not wishing to give up their culture or move to America to preserve it might seek an “island” from which to preserve their lives, families, and traditions. Such enclaves could offer the hope of a second Renaissance in exile.
• America’s ruling political parties have both embraced “big government” as their mantra: for Republicans, big government encourages virtue, discourages vice, promotes a strong military, and rewards faithful political districts with pork; for Democrats, big government rights wrongs, ensures (enforces) equality of outcomes, emasculates a strong military, and rewards appropriate pressure groups with preferred legal rights. Actual limited government has fallen by the wayside in favor of doing good, and elected officials have assumed an air of arrogance toward their subjects that is becoming all too obvious. Free enclaves in space must be established, if only to get out from under foot once in awhile. But would such a government willingly establish such colonies, knowing its citizens were likely to secede? Would businesses funding such settlements accept independence if the end result was no return on investment? Yet the frontier must be preserved. We must do something before freedom is extinguished.
• Book after book and study after study is pointing out the steadily decreasing gap between East and West. China has more honor students than we have students, and not all our students are geniuses. If it weren’t for immigration, America’s birth rate might well be falling. Would technological success or the challenge of the frontier create the cultural incentives to overcome these hurdles? One can only hope. There is some doubt as to whether our educational system can still teach kids the skills and insights they need to conquer the space frontier.
• Space can, in fact, be tied to so many Earth-based issues that it truly baffles me how short-sighted our society has been toward it. We need a commitment to technological leadership—check. We need a reason to feel hopeful about the future—check. We need goals worthy of the freedoms that God and our Constitution gave us—check. We need reasons for kids to study the hard topics—check. We need new resources, energy, raw materials, and so forth to enable our capitalist economy to keep expanding without undue harm to our planet—check. We need more information about how the climate of our planet functions and what, if anything, we can do about it—check.

On and on like that. Space exploration and settlement are truly multidisciplinary activities worthy of our attention. And yet NASA is 0.58% of the federal budget, while “more important things here on Earth” are many dozens or hundreds of times greater—and still the Earth-bound want more from the paltry sum NASA consumes of the federal treasury. In fact, this will only get worse, either as the War on Terror deepens or as the Baby Boomers start retiring. Discretionary spending, of which NASA is a part, will dwindle to nothing, even though it is the one agency specifically dedicated to developing the very technologies that could save us. Frustrating, but there it is.

Verify Your Inner Geek

The Inner Geek Quiz can be found at http://www.innergeek.us/geek-test.html

A Little Utopian Thinking, Conservative-style

This could rightly be called the Pournelle Doctrine, as it's 90% congruent with the writings of Jerry Pournelle. It's a vision of America as leader, not dominator. One can always dream.

2008-2058

Quoting John Adams, the U.S. President says, “We are friends of liberty everywhere, but guardians only of our own.” America rescinds the Bush Doctrine of transformation in the Muslim world, leaving the internal governments of the Arab world to the aspirations of their people. However, America retains the right to invade and punish any nation found to actively support terrorism. Reconstruction and aid will be based on the behavior of the successor government and its willingness to restrain radical elements in its midst.

In practical terms, this also means a draw-down of U.S. military commitments in Europe (especially the former Yugoslavia and Germany) and Japan. As a matter of honor, America maintains its bases in Iraq only until the Iraqis are able to withstand incursions from Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia with little to no assistance.

The military has by no means been disbanded, though. The Navy is back up to the Reagan-era levels, with 16 active carrier battle groups and an ability to strike nearly anywhere within 24 hours. American national interests have been made clear to the world: free and safe passage of innocent ships anywhere in the world; no kidnapping of American civilians; no negotiating with al-Qaeda or related groups; free flowing of oil at market prices.

The Army has a new and more straightforward task: manning the ramparts of the new security wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and tightened security fence along the U.S.-Canadian border. With illegal immigration reduced to a trickle and welfare rolls likewise reduced, there are fewer jobs that “Americans will not do,” given the proper incentives.

Attached to this massive shift in immigration and border security has been a top-to-bottom reform of the Transportation Security Agency. No longer political appointees, the senior officers of the TSA are now seasoned professionals with backgrounds in civil or military security. These professionals, in turn, are helping to root out inefficient, ineffective, and intrusive security procedures at our nation’s airports and other transportation facilities. New technologies and better databases, too, are helping to “profile” potential terrorists based on behavior and background rather than “race.”

Domestically, the federal budget is down from its record high of $3 trillion. Even at half that size, better use is being made of it, from massive investments in nuclear power to ground-solar, wind, fuel cell, and space-solar power. These changes have not made OPEC happy, but they have had to learn to content themselves with steady incomes based on petroleum purchases for plastics rather than massive purchases to fuel cars and trucks. The American public breathed a sigh of relief when the last base in Iraq was dismantled after the fall of the Iranian theocracy.

The combined reforms of the consumption tax and flat welfare checks to all citizens have freed up literally billions of dollars once spent on auditors, accountants, and tax assessors. Most taxes are included up-front in purchases and transferred electronically to the Department of the Treasury. Imports face a low 10% tax, which caused much heartache in China and Europe at first. However, once our trading partners saw an end to complicated rules for import duties on specific items, they realized that what they lost on some items they more than made up for in reduced legal and paperwork fees.

Educationally, America has undergone yet another seismic shift. “Opt-out” testing procedures have enabled students to avoid, skip, or drop out of schools, to the vast relief of many teachers frustrated by “No Child Left Behind.” With smaller class sizes, education has now become a more selective (and lucrative) career. Education reform at the state and local levels has enabled the federal government to reduce its financial and curriculum mandates. Some of those reforms have included a requirement that teachers be educated or at least certified in the subjects they teach. This movement has been particularly popular at the elementary and secondary school levels, though some reactionaries at college campuses continue to insist on guaranteed tenure and education-only credentials.

The space-solar power mentioned earlier could not have come about without an active national commitment to space transportation, both public and private. NASA has returned to its old role as explorer and a facilitator and distributor of aerospace technology while the private sector has gone forth to conquer the near-Earth heavens. Military spacecraft and government space stations still exist, but they are quickly becoming outnumbered by the number of private space stations, orbital outposts, and lunar bases harvesting the vast riches of the near-Earth asteroids. And NASA still remains the premier organization for exploring the unknown. While private-sector ventures have just begun supplying the first two Mars bases, NASA continues building its first crewed expedition to Europa, as well as the first orbital cyclotron and first automated probes to Alpha Centauri and other nearby stars.

Overseas, the world was forced to admit that this was a different, and in many ways better, America. No longer imposing its lifestyle or form of government at the point of a gun, it has become content to tend its garden, grow its businesses, raise its families, and pursue its technologies on its own. The tariff changes, education reforms, and commitments to space and energy-efficient technologies have again made American schools, students, and workers valuable commodities, even in the population-stabilized India and depopulating China. It is not “one world,” as the world-government advocates had striven for, but it is, truly, a different world from any seen before.

Realpolitik, Paleoconservatism, and the Future

I just finished reading Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy, which is a serious investigation by a serious man on the ebbs, flows, and problems of foreign policy. Kissinger is a believer in "realism," which is to say interest-based power politics, not Wilsonian idealism. Diplomacy was written in 1993, thus closing with the end of the Cold War and the brief respite America enjoyed between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Islamic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, starts with the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and ends in 1993. And while Kissinger probably bears the taint of association with Nixon, he also demands a hearing. Specifically, his focus on American interests rather than idealism provides an alternative viewpoint in the 2008 election.

Kissinger believes firmly in moderating (or enacting) American idealism through interest-based realism. He cautions (in Diplomacy) against the temptation to strategic overreach in our desire to remake the world in our own image. Now might be a good time to employ Kissinger's (and yes, Nixon's) foreign policy in the next presidential term or two. HK's take on Vietnam is instructive.

Let's start with one important point: we are in much better shape in Iraq today than we were in Vietnam in 1968. We have fewer troops there, have had fewer casualties, and have--despite the bombings and other al-Qaeda-based foolishness--more political stability. We still require "peace with honor" because a) our political reputation in the world is now at stake, regardless of what the next president thinks; and b) because we owe it to our troops, who DO value honor, even if Congress does not. There is not (yet) a political consensus to withdraw from Iraq in the face of totalitarianism or massive opposition here at home. We can draw down our troops gradually, enabling Iraq--a made-up post-colonial state like Vietnam--to have the military breathing space to establish stable political institutions. This is, essentially, what Bush and Petraeus are trying to do now. Taking HK's theory to heart, we got into Iraq for idealistic reasons (eliminate dictatorship, export democracy, elilminate a WMD threat); if the next president wants to get out, they can do so using this power-based theory--we finish the job because it is in our best interests to do so.

However, having said that about Iraq (and Afghanistan), we need not go forth in search of more dragons to slay. Further changes in the Middle East can be made through more traditional, Realpolitik methods: surrounding known or potential enemies with coalitions of the willing, economic isolation of rogue states, economic rewards for allied nations and nations that change their internal policies, punishing nations or specific individuals that harm our citizens without resorting to occupations, providing financial or military support to dissident movements or to terrorist-supporting nations that change their behavior--in short, sparing our legions of long-drawn-out bloodletting.

Unfortunately, I fear that both "conservatives" (neocons) and liberals have been bitten by the imperial bug, the desire to Do Good, as Jerry Pournelle might say, just because we can. We can still be a beacon to the world, Kissinger reminds us, but we needn't overreach ourselves in the attempt. Otherwise, we will eventually inspire the hatred and envy of a new coalition of the willing--this one directed at us.