A LITTLE POETIC JUSTICE | 2008-01-12
In a world where the memory-hole is universal, NOTHING has gone down the media-history memory-hole like the Civil Rights' mule-train. No one knows it now, but the day before the moon-launch in 1969, the entire Civil Rights' "leadership" joined in a massive protest. A huge train of mule-driven wagons came to the Kennedy Space Center, protesting that the money to be used to go to the moon was not spent on welfare for blacks.
I have heard the group that calls itself The Greatest Generation bitch endlessly about how "money was blasted into space" instead of being given to THEM to add to their lifetime benefits. Half of the people I listened to bitch had some version of pacers for their heart of other devices which had been developed by the basic research involved in the huge moon landing effort.
The space effort was the basis of Silicon Valley, CA, now America's biggest export, even beyond wheat, in the age of a declining dollar. That effort was the biggest BASIC RESEARCH effort in human history by far.
Our society spends a fraction of a percent of its money on BASIC research. The reason for this is that BASIC research, unlike development, is a general benefit to the society. You can't get a patent on the results, and the benefits do not accrue directly to the person or company that does it.
But almost ALL of our advancing living standard, disease fighting, and all the rest derives from BASIC research, which development only DEVELOPS. So BASIC research has to compete for funds from the same donors who support welfare, vets' benefits, "education," housing, litigation for the poor, and all the rest.
I had to personally save the Hubble Telescope in its beginning stages because the all-important subcommittee which controlled NASA funding was entitled, "HUD and Other Independent Agencies." So its chairman was a big-city liberal Democrat who wanted money for housing and none for NASA, and its ranking Republicans was a Philadelphia liberal who wanted likewise.
To save the Hubble telescope and the space effort in the first year of the Carter regime, with both houses and the administration anti-space, we had to do the impossible: beat the chairman AND the Republicans' ranking member on a floor-vote.
Before that, we had to delay the whole House until the weekend when the four hundred thousand telegrams could show up and the scientists flown in. It was a trick move, so we had to move fast.
So the mule-train was just one more effort by the civil-righters and "Greatest Generation" to stop the last trickle of basic research money.
Now the group that calls itself "The Greatest Generation" is dying out. It could have lived a lot longer and a lot healthier if some of the money the Claude Peppers got for it had gone into the same basic research its pacemakers came from. There was PLENTY of time for generation-old basic research to filter into the huge benefits it always brings.
But they were with the Mule-Train crowd. They were for integration since they were out of school, and it was just a Great Cause for them to enjoy. But it cost them life and misery in the end. It even diverted huge sums of potential vet benefit money to welfare programs, mostly benefiting bureaucrats and the inside-the-Beltway consulting industry.
Great Society Washington had a saying, "If you want to make money, get into poverty."
And, of course, the New America produced those muggers who kept the old folks imprisoned in their homes, or beaten in them, at night.
I've heard it a hundred times: "I was for integration, but the thing has gone too far."
And I have said a hundred times, "We TOLD you it would go this far, and you laughed at us."
Beware of what you ask for ...
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