No Frontier

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

Lost in this year’s election and economic bad news was that fact that the United States will soon be without a manned space program. The surviving three Space Shuttles will retire from service sometime in 2010. This leaves Russia and China, for the short term, the only nations capable of manned space flight. Russia’s recent military annexation of parts of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia puts the United States in the uncomfortable position of having to rely on the increasingly belligerent Russian Bear for rides to the International Space Station. With trillions of dollars earmarked for Wall Street and Main Street, and promised government expenditures for larger social programs (the most expensive being nationalized health care), it is increasing unlikely NASA will see a new launch vehicle (scaled-back though it may be) any time soon.

The once proud American space program – that, against all odds, put men and the stars and stripes on the moon – will become a mere shadow of its former self. It is a touchstone of many shocks to follow as our nation’s economy and vision slide deeper into decline. What the first President Bush called “the vision thing,” – desperately grasping for a description to differentiate the Republicans from the Clinton Democrats, sadly remains out of reach for his party and, increasingly, for his nation’s citizens. Epochs in American history have names: The Age of Revolution; The Great Awakening and the Industrial Age. We are entering a new age – The Age of Confusion.

“I must study politics and war,” said John Adams, “that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.”

Adam’s assumption was that increased prosperity would allow Americans to engage in nobler pursuits. Today, at a time of unprecedented prosperity, increased leisure has led, instead, to confusion and its resulting neurosis. It is just a theory, but I believe the increased number of serial killers is part and parasol of this destructive neurosis.

President Obama recognized the nation’s profound emptiness, promising to give the people purpose. “It's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential,” said Obama. Once hitched to his wagon, the new President promises to steer us, and the wagon we pull, to a brighter and more fulfilled existence. “Where there is no vision,” says the Book of Proverbs, “the people perish.”

Without a transcendent vision, human beings follow anyone or anything that professes to fill their need for meaning. The Obama phenomenon is just the latest and, most assuredly, not the last. As with all secular faiths and their leaders, Obama will fail and America’s confused souls will continue the secular search; “As when a hungry man dreams he is eating and awakes with his hunger not satisfied, or as when a thirsty man dreams he is drinking and awakes faint, with his thirst not quenched…,” wrote the prophet Isaiah.

“Without religion,” said John Adams, “this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean hell.”

--Mr. Curmudgeon