International Affairs: May 2008 Archives
Glenn Reynolds almost certainly knows more about America's and China's space programs than I do, but I think his characterization of Chinese progress vs. American stagnation ignores at least one important consideration.
Space experts differ on whether China wants to compete directly with the U.S.—perhaps, given our slow and fumbling efforts, beating us back to the Moon—or simply displace Japan as the prime technological power in Asia. On the one hand, the U.S. retains a huge lead, while China is still building up spacecraft, like lunar probes and orbital docking equipment, that we mastered back in the 1960s. On the other hand, like America in the 60s, China is forging ahead, while the U.S. in the 21st century is, at best, standing still.
What would America be doing if we weren't standing still? Sending people to Mars? Establishing a permanent base on the moon? Lowering the cost of lifting mass into earth orbit? Those are all great ideas that I'm very much in favor of... but they're also much harder than what we did in the 1960s and what China is doing now. It seems that the cost and difficulty of progress in space isn't linear, and America has hit a steep part of the curve. China may be catching up to us, but that doesn't mean that they'll be able to bound past us... they're likely to run smack into the same mountains we have.
America's space program has stagnated, but not only because of stifling bureaucracy, lack of vision, and national distraction. The next steps, as most people envision them, are going to be harder, more expensive, and more dangerous than what we've done in the past, by more than an order of magnitude. I'm sure Reynolds knows all this, and perhaps he'd even care to elaborate on what I've said.
It's amazing that there are still uncontacted tribes anywhere in the world, and it's very sad to me that anyone hesitates to bring them into modernity.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — One of Brazil's last uncontacted Indian tribes has been spotted in the far western Amazon jungle near the Peruvian border, the National Indian Foundation said Thursday.The Indians were sighted in an Ethno-Environmental Protected Area along the Envira River in flights over remote Acre state, said the Brazilian government foundation, known as Funai. ...
"Four distinct isolated peoples exist in this region, whom we have accompanied for 20 years," Funai expert Jose Carlos Meirelles Junior said in a statement.
The tribe sighted recently is one of the last not to be contacted by officials. Funai does not make contact with such Indian tribes and prevents invasions of their land to ensure their autonomy, the foundation said.
I think it's morally perverse to leave these human beings living in absolute destitution -- doomed to disease, starvation, and misery -- simply because they're ignorant of modern civilization. Any one of us, in their place but knowing what we know, would instantly choose modernity over savagery; it's only due to the twisted logic of "multiculturalism" that we hesitate to rescue these people from their pointless suffering.
These Indians need to be given the same choices we have, the same respect for their human dignity, and they can't make informed decisions if we leave them in ignorance. They aren't "cute" or "quaint", they aren't pets or specimens to be studied. They're people. Just because they're ignorant doesn't mean we should abandon them to lives of barbarism.
From a Christian perspective, evangelism alone is sufficient reason to make contact. Ignorance of the Gospel is no excuse, and the eternal futures of these Indians are at risk. They need to hear about Jesus Christ, how their sins can be forgiven, and how much God loves them. Anything less is in direct violation of the Great Commission.
Matthew 28:18-20: Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Barack Obama doesn't understand what it means to be an American.
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said."That's not leadership. That's not going to happen," he added.
Who cares what other countries say? Obama clearly doesn't comprehend American exceptionalism. The whole point of being the wealthiest nation on the planet is so that we can live well and do what we want.
And yes, I'm mostly serious.
The Democrats' panties are in a bunch over President Bush's criticism of Barack Obama's plan to consult with our enemies, but the ladies doth protest too much, methinks.
Speaking before the Knesset, Bush said that “some people” believe the United States “should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.""We have heard this foolish delusion before," Bush said. "As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history." ...
Sen. Joe Biden, piling on to Democratic complaints about President Bush’s speech in Israel today:
“This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset ... and make this kind of ridiculous statement.” ...
"There is no escaping what the president is doing," said Durbin, who supports Obama. "It is an attack on Sen. Obama’s position that we should not be avoiding even those we disagree with when it comes to negotiations and diplomacy."
Durbin called Bush's remarks "unfair and really unfortunate."
Well, yeah, Bush is criticizing Obama's foreign policy ideas. The President is in charge of America's foreign policy, so this is a very different situation than when leftist politicians go to foreign countries to malign America. Still, I personally would have preferred if President Bush had made these accusations from the White House or the steps of the Capitol.
I wrote about David Mamet's break with "liberalism" a couple of months ago, and here's another great story about a Hollywood leftist's conversion to the right-wing.
In my former life I was Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh’s agent and manager. I co-owned a prosperous talent management firm, Relativity Management, lived in a four-story mansion, and somehow successfully stumbled (often drunk and stoned) through the whorehouse called Hollywood. I was an indoctrinated hardcore liberal. If you think I’m a spoiled dick and you hate me, then we’re on the right track. But having a child 10 years ago changed my thinking. It gave me a certain respect for capitalism and even corporate America.When I bought a new Hummer H2 back in 2002, I ordered a custom license plate that read U.S. WINS. I got it because I believed in the message. I wanted people to have a reaction to the plate, usually negative, and then examine their thinking. Would it be so bad to win this war? Plus, I knew it would fucking piss everyone in the city off because it was Los Angeles.
I could give two fucks about WMDs. There were much more important reasons to topple Saddam—terrorism being one of them. The root causes of terrorism are the lack of capitalism, the lack of democracy, and the lack of modern education. What has stood in the way of those things has primarily been the regimes of Iraq, Iran, and Syria. We just got one of them out of the way.
It looks like visiting Iraq and watching the War on Terror first-hand can really affect one's perspective.
(HT: My wife.)
The National Security Agency says Japanese is hard... so hard that you shouldn't even try to learn it.
(HT: Nick and Bernardo.)
