Sent via email to Rachel Maddow:
Rachel,
Echoing the sentiments of one of my favorite current writers, Christopher Moore, I am officially declaring you as my little sister. This is in part because my married status precludes anything else, but most it is because I admire your reporting, your commentary, and, frankly, your spunk.
That said, I must ask you to refrain from further disparaging Newt Gingrich’s idea of a colony on the Moon. It is not that I particularly like Gingrich. In fact, I don’t. He reminds me of pasty mashed potatoes and find his ideology utterly distasteful no matter how much gravy I could pour over him. Still, the idea of having a colony on the Moon is one that I would support.
We have as a nation abandoned space exploration and helping to build the Space Station and landing Rovers on Mars simply isn’t the same.
I grew up with Sputnik and Telstar being humanity’s first attempts to see what is beyond our atmosphere. Every time there was a space launch, I would stay home as late as possible to watch it before leaving for school. I had it timed perfectly to the exact amount of time it took me to run the four blocks to school and would sit patiently while they counted down. On those days when they had to stop the countdown and I could wait no longer, I would rush to school with a transistor radio just so that I wouldn’t miss it.
The nuns at our school frowned upon such radios, but I would still risk their wrath and covertly have the radio in my desk or pants pocket with a single earpiece wire strung through my shirtsleeve. I would sit, supposedly listening to the teacher, with my hand cupped over my ear, listening instead for those wondrous words, “Three, we have ignition. Two. One, we have liftoff.” Little did I know then that that earpiece was the earwig that Ray Bradbury foretold in Fahrenheit 451, or that it was a precursor to how we listen to most music today.
I mourned the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee in the Apollo 1 fire. Two and half years later, I sat with my parents and countless other millions of people to watch grainy black and white images of those first human steps on the moon. Those Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts were among the heroes of my youth. Then came Apollo 17, the last lunar mission, in 1972, and we haven’t been back since.
Years later, space still intrigued me, and I applied for the ill-fated teacher in space program that NASA touted. I mourned Christa McCauliffe and the others. We had the Space Shuttle, to me a semi for space, but at least still manned. Now the shuttle program is over and we have to use Russian craft to send people to the Space Station. It is now nearly forty years since we have set foot on the Moon, and I am still angry about it.
It is true that space exploration is dangerous. It is true we have deficit and debt problems in the nation and that the needs of our poor are great. We can and should do great things, and shedding the chains of gravity is but one of those.
The space program of the 60s brought us many benefits, some trivial like powdered drinks, some useful like Velcro, and some more meaningful like the basis for much of the technology we take for granted today. More importantly, this nation jump-started an increase in funding for education. As a nation we collectively decided that expanding our knowledge of the universe was the right and proper thing to do. We came together as a nation in this goal. And, despite the cost of NASA, we also decided to fund Medicare and other social programs. In short, this nation can and should do great things at the same time regardless of the costs. The space program that I grew up with united our people, and that unity allowed us to accomplish great things beyond those footprints we left in the dust 238,857 miles away.
So, please stop disparaging Gingrich on this. We should not have stopped manned missions in space. We should have a colony on the Moon already. From there the stars are closer, our humanity can blossom, and we can once again achieve our full potential.
As Tennyson said, “… though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
We can still, as Ulysses, sail beyond the sunset.
Friday, March 02, 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
Inconsistency
I sincerely believe that all life is sacred. Thus, I am opposed to the death penalty and abortion, and it is in regard to these points of cultural contention that I first noticed the inconsistent nature of some right-wingers. To me, the rule is simple: Thou shalt not kill.
It is true that many, if not most, modern translations of that rule supplant “kill” with “murder.” Thus, they are saying that the scholars who did the first translations of The Bible got it wrong. These first translations consisted of the two main competing churches, The Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. The results we have today are the King James Version (KJV) and the Douay-Rheims version (DR), both of which use the word “kill” in that Commandment. The 21st Century King James Version still uses the word, as does the most recent Douay-Rheims.
Etymologically, the word “murder” had been in use in the English language for at least 300 years and was thus available for both the KJV and DR translators toward the end of the 1500s, yet they still chose “kill.” It seems to me that the use of “murder” by some fundamentalists and by modern translations is based more on political ideology. The Bible, after all, is a translation of a translation of a translation of an oral tradition handed down from father to son for many generations.
As I said, I believe all life is sacred be it in the womb or in a prison cell.
***
Another inconsistency I see in these political time is the constant call to restore the rights granted by the Constitution that the current administration has supposedly eviscerated, at least according to Fox News and their ilk. Yet is it these same people who see nothing wrong with violation of the Constitution’s 4th and 5th amendments be requiring drug testing for welfare recipients.
Yes, it is true that some jobs require drug testing. But it is by no means the majority of jobs, as some right-wingers would have us believe. And yes some jobs that involve public safety should indeed require testing to ensure that safety. Still, without probably cause of criminal activity, there is no reason to insist that welfare recipients submit, or indeed any worker or job seeker submit to testing. Further, the 5th amendment allows individuals the right to not incriminate themselves.
The right’s argument is fallaciously simple: if you’re not doing anything, you don’t have anything to worry about. That kind of reasoning allows the government to do anything under the guise of the public good. That kind of reasoning is people willingly giving up their rights, and when we do that, we lose them altogether.
***
Another long held tenet of the right is less government control in our lives and less taxes. The aforementioned drug-testing proposal is a clear example of where taxes will have to be raised as government intrudes on the personal lives of people. It seems that when the right wants to instill some type of moral ethic, it is perfectly okay for the government to step in, be it regarding the issue of contraception, abortion, or gay marriage.
While they may make a legitimate claim for religious freedom, it is indeed odd that GOP proposals and enacted state laws since at least 2000 have made the same requirement of insurance companies to provide contraception, they had no qualms about religious freedom when it was they who were introducing those requirements. Now that the current President has offered a legitimate compromise on the issue, they want nothing to do with it.
Last year, the Speaker of the House commissioned a report of solutions to the debt and deficit problems of the nation. That report, posted on the Speaker’s web site last year, noted that the best, most effective method to attack our nation’s problems was through a combination of both cuts and increases on revenues. The ratio the Speaker’s own report suggested was a ratio of 85 percent cuts in spending and a 15% increase in tax revenues. Yet, when the Democrats and the President suggested just that, they ignored their own experts.
It is true that many, if not most, modern translations of that rule supplant “kill” with “murder.” Thus, they are saying that the scholars who did the first translations of The Bible got it wrong. These first translations consisted of the two main competing churches, The Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. The results we have today are the King James Version (KJV) and the Douay-Rheims version (DR), both of which use the word “kill” in that Commandment. The 21st Century King James Version still uses the word, as does the most recent Douay-Rheims.
Etymologically, the word “murder” had been in use in the English language for at least 300 years and was thus available for both the KJV and DR translators toward the end of the 1500s, yet they still chose “kill.” It seems to me that the use of “murder” by some fundamentalists and by modern translations is based more on political ideology. The Bible, after all, is a translation of a translation of a translation of an oral tradition handed down from father to son for many generations.
As I said, I believe all life is sacred be it in the womb or in a prison cell.
***
Another inconsistency I see in these political time is the constant call to restore the rights granted by the Constitution that the current administration has supposedly eviscerated, at least according to Fox News and their ilk. Yet is it these same people who see nothing wrong with violation of the Constitution’s 4th and 5th amendments be requiring drug testing for welfare recipients.
Yes, it is true that some jobs require drug testing. But it is by no means the majority of jobs, as some right-wingers would have us believe. And yes some jobs that involve public safety should indeed require testing to ensure that safety. Still, without probably cause of criminal activity, there is no reason to insist that welfare recipients submit, or indeed any worker or job seeker submit to testing. Further, the 5th amendment allows individuals the right to not incriminate themselves.
The right’s argument is fallaciously simple: if you’re not doing anything, you don’t have anything to worry about. That kind of reasoning allows the government to do anything under the guise of the public good. That kind of reasoning is people willingly giving up their rights, and when we do that, we lose them altogether.
***
Another long held tenet of the right is less government control in our lives and less taxes. The aforementioned drug-testing proposal is a clear example of where taxes will have to be raised as government intrudes on the personal lives of people. It seems that when the right wants to instill some type of moral ethic, it is perfectly okay for the government to step in, be it regarding the issue of contraception, abortion, or gay marriage.
While they may make a legitimate claim for religious freedom, it is indeed odd that GOP proposals and enacted state laws since at least 2000 have made the same requirement of insurance companies to provide contraception, they had no qualms about religious freedom when it was they who were introducing those requirements. Now that the current President has offered a legitimate compromise on the issue, they want nothing to do with it.
Last year, the Speaker of the House commissioned a report of solutions to the debt and deficit problems of the nation. That report, posted on the Speaker’s web site last year, noted that the best, most effective method to attack our nation’s problems was through a combination of both cuts and increases on revenues. The ratio the Speaker’s own report suggested was a ratio of 85 percent cuts in spending and a 15% increase in tax revenues. Yet, when the Democrats and the President suggested just that, they ignored their own experts.
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