Derek Webber writes that settlement has to be an objective of our space policy.
The Augustine panel noted that if the goal isn’t space settlement, there’s no point in having a human spaceflight program at all. The private people (such as Elon Musk) get this, but Congress continues to fail to do so.
“Maybe Lincoln didn’t understand what was going on as well as Paul Finkelman now does, but I regard that as unlikely.”
So do I. The notion that the nation could have been founded as one without slavery is profoundly historically ignorant. The Founders did the best they could do under the circumstances, and even with such an atrocious flaw it was still the best design of a government in human history up to that time.
Or since, despite the fact that about half the nation seems willing to abandon it.
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems related.
You’d think with all of the money they spend on it, they’d get better results, but it’s almost impossible to prove discrimination, even though it’s obvious to everyone that it is occurring.
Per capita federal expenditures have almost doubled since Carter, and go up almost regardless of which party is in the White House. Ironically, it was steady only under Bill Clinton, but that’s only because he gave himself a Republican Congress in the second year of his first term. George W. Bush had an opportunity top get it under control, but he was a disaster on that front (the biggest reason he lost the Congress in 2006, which led to even more disastrous spending).
Is it an opportunity to take back the culture from the Left? If so, it’s one we shouldn’t miss.
If they want to remain moderate, they’re going to have to behave “immoderately.”
Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.
More thoughts, over at PJMedia.
Campuses have it on the run.
Well, what do you expect from something that costs so little?
Oh, wait.
No, there is no entitlement to not be offended.
I am shocked, of course.
It’s the spending, stupid. And not the war spending.
As Glenn’s emailer notes, it started to skyrocket right after the Democrats took over Congress in 2007. Before that we were on track to a balanced budget. The fiscal crisis would have certainly caused a spike in the deficit with reduced revenues, but absent the insane economic policies of the first two years of the Obama administration, the economy would have bounced back just as sharply as it dropped, as it does in most other recessions.