RIP, Neil Armstrong

I saw you that night. Well, at least your leg, shadowy and ill-defined, tentative, feeling your way, and I knew you had actually placed your foot on the moon a couple of times before you actually stepped down and said that phrase. I, and practically everyone else in the world, heard this: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." And, even at fourteen years old, I knew there was something wrong with that- was it a small step, or a giant leap?

Of course, we now all know the signal was cut out and you actually said..."for a man." Which was poetry, pure poetry. And, if I had heard it correctly, I probably would have swooned. And I'm not given to swooning.

Because the world changed, Neil, right then. It felt like the culmination of history. Even my fourteen year old soul knew it, and I leaped up and ran outside and grabbed my stupid little 60x Sears telescope and swore, SWORE, I saw you and Buzz and the flag right there, on the Sea. We, mankind (a word now despised, Neil), had loosed bonds. Magics had taken over, and it was 1492 and 1621 and 1776 and 1865, all over again. There was no limit. There was no end.

Since then...well.

But it doesn't take anything away from that night. Your night. And yes, yes, thousands got you there but, Neil, you're the one. You're the one who delivered it.

So, on your way to wherever, stop by. Give the flag a shake. Send a little note back to us that, even in the grips of mediocrity, there's still loosed bonds. Still magics.

For all mankind.

Curiosity, with no dead cats

Look at this: we dropped a VW camper bus on the surface of Mars in an extraordinary choreograph of orbit and angle and thrust and parachute.

Still got it.

But Schlub, Schlub, what a waste of time and money! And aren't you the guy who thinks the government should stay out of everything?

Well, the government should stay out of people's lives and ways, of course, but we come together and form a government to take care of certain functions. Like defense. Like commerce.

Like exploration.

How else do we marshal resources and send the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria where no man has gone before? Well, white men, anyway. Where else do you think you're going to find those exotic minerals, previously unknown resources, miracle cures and astounding technology, unless you head out there?

And, besides, contractors put the Curiosity together, not the government; they just asked somebody to do it.  

See what you can do when you dream?

Mazeltov, NASA.

Eat More Chikin'

We Americans sort of listen to your cant while going about our business. Most of what you say is harmless, so you're pretty easy to ignore. But, every once in awhile, you go too far, like threatening a business. And what do we do? Smash shop windows, camp in parks and defecate all over them, scream at your children while blocking your front yard? Burn things?

No. We just show up.

In droves. In legions.

Just like we're going to do in November.

You'll be stunned for weeks.

Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, in the beginning, which wasn't a beginning (okay, about four years ago), the King of Everything was golf-carting across the land, blessing the peasants and children with his beneficence, allowing them to bask in the brilliance that was him, when he chanced upon a sad little peasant. "My son," the King said gently, "why the downcast expression when I, your Lord Leige and Illuminator, am among you?"

"Oh, great King!" the peasant wailed, "I am without direction and interest, finding myself here, in the middle of this mud field, without any idea of what to do."

"Ah," the Wise King said, "a man of no productivity. Let me fix that." And the King stretched forth his mighty hand and, invoking the magic words, "StalLenin!", cast a spell. Suddenly, a blinding light issued forth from the earth, a choir of heavenly angels sang a single note of "Aaah!" and erupting from the raw materials of the world there sprang forth interstates and sewers and street lights and municipal waste management and electrical power and wires (no solar or wind power yet. Even magic has its limits) and policemen and trucks and DMVs and City Councils and zoning and industrial might. And the King saw that it was good.

The peasant, though, remained sad faced and wailing. "My child," the King said gently, "I have given you great gifts of infrastructure. Why do you remain downcast?"

"Oh, Great King," the peasant wailed, "I am most astonished by your wondrous gifts to me and the rest of the undeserving, but I still do not know what to DO with such bounty."

"Ah," the Great King nodded wisely and stretched forth his hand and uttered, "All Linsky!" and there arose among the magnificence of the infrastructure schools of the elementary, with comely golden-haired teachers to impart knowledge of the King's Wisdom, buildings of great high schools to teach the wonder that is government, and universities of sage wizards where is imparted the truth for the moment. And the peasant was whisked away on the backs of the Dispossessed and was bathed in the Sense of the Court and whirled back to stand before his Lord and Leader. "Oh, Great King!" he cried, "I now know what to do! I shall...become a plumber!"

"And I!" said his wife, "shall drive large trucks across the roads you have built and give you tithes through my union membership!"

"And I," said the peasant's brilliant son, "will invent the internet and give everyone Facebook and porn."

"And I," said the equally brilliant peasant daughter, "shall build hospitals where only those less than 55 years old may be treated." And there was much dancing and rejoicing.

But then a dark cloud covered the sun and a wind of terrible reaction blew and lo! there appeared the evil Witch of the Right, Sarappalin. And the peasants were sore afraid. "Now, hold on here just a minute, bub," she spoke with great disrespect at the Lord King, "we've actually had these things for a lot longer than you've..."

"MSENBEESEE!" roared the Great King in his terrible wrath, and a hurricane of Correctness picked up the horrible witch and blew her to the land of Bitter Clingers. And she was never heard from again.

And there was much dancing and rejoicing.

Left our doors unlocked, too

We could count the number of mass murderers between 1950 and 1975 on one hand. Charles Whitman, Richard Speck, Charles Starkweather, Charles Manson (hmm, maybe Moms should stop naming their kids 'Charles'), episodic monster so rare we knew their names. They became boogeymen.

Since then, we've lost count. Harris and Klebold, Tim McVeigh, Cho, Defeo, Hasan, Colin Ferguson, many we don't even remember...and now this clown, Holmes. They're not even boogeymen anymore, just dangers we've come to accept.

What happened to us?

Oh, the influence of video games and movies, drugs, paint chips, global warming, whatever. But, really, it's just one thing: we no longer value the individual.  

Back when Schlub was a bald-faced boy, guns were like shirts—everybody had at least one, maybe even a dozen. There were so many guns lying around my house I had to move them to get to the silverware. At twelve years old, I thought nothing of grabbing a rifle and going outside to hunt snakes. My parents thought nothing of it, either. Neither did the neighbors. It never occurred to me to take those guns to school and settle scores. It didn't occur to anyone. You took care of bullies yourself, either fight them off or run away. You let your ex-girlfriend go. You quit a job when the boss mistreated you.

You didn't kill them all, and any unfortunate bystanders.

We did not shoot up our schools and neighborhoods because we believed that everyone, even the bully, was entitled to live. Sure, they made us mad and afraid, but that was a test of character, not an excuse for wholesale slaughter. We didn't worry about someone kicking in the classroom door and spraying lead indiscriminately. No one would do that; it was just completely out of our character. The boogeyman were rare, like clear air lightening, and the State made sure they got an appointment with Ol' Sparky. We didn't worry about those guys.

Now...

Everyone is the center of the universe, everyone is a winner, movies are all about you, and killing lots of people is an afterthought. There is no God, no truth, no soul, and society and Republicans are the reason you don't have anything. Madison Avenue hypnotizes, parents nag, the principal is a jerk, and the neighborhood kids are mean.

Everything is somebody else's fault. Everything.

You're owed, that's what your teachers said so, poor, benighted and abused victim of corporate greed, load up your rifles and kill kill kill all the oppressors and their babies as they watch a movie that's really all about you.

Brought to you by public education, victim mentality, and the Democrat party.

What it takes to be President

They're all abuzz on the radio today about Condeleeza Rice. I love Condeleeza Rice. She is a brilliant Soviet scholar who can stand toe-to-toe with Putin and his gang of thugs. I would pick her for National Security Advisor or Secretary of State again. But VP? Nope. Waste of her talents.

Amidst all the buzz, some pundit asked if Rice, or Rubio or Pawlenty or whoever, had the experience to be President. That one heartbeat away thing and all.

Experience to be President? Where, exactly, does one get such experience?

Oh, c'mon, Schlub, that's easy— you get it from being a Senator or Congressman or mayor or governor, yeah, especially governor, 'cause that's like being a minature President.

Uh, no.

All that "experience" makes you a better politician. And politicians are the LAST persons who should be President. Indeed, all the people you think should be President, shouldn't.

Let's take Ronald Reagan as an example. Guy should never have been President. I mean, an actor? With chimps? Divorced? Didn't go to Harvard, either. A governor, sure, but you know, California, the Twilight Zone. Wore a cowboy hat, too, so just not the sophisticated brie-eatin' Foreign-Affairs-published sophisticate we want to elect so Europeans will stop calling us rubes.

Won in a landslide, yes, but only because of the same "infected toe" situation we are in today: running against Jimmy Carter, who was Obama Lite. Besides, winning by a landslide is no measure of Presidential stature, as the current situation proves.

It's what you do afterwards.

Reagan was an astonishingly brilliant President, the best one of these modern times, a hero, a wonder. And he shouldn't have been, given professional politicians' criteria for leading. So, why was he?

Simple. He regarded these truths to be self-evident:

a. The individual is more important than the mass.

b. The United States is an aberration, historically unique, and while this model serves as example, it only works here. Be grateful, be awestruck, that you are an American.

c. Nothing can be accomplished through government. Indeed, government must diminish so the individual can flourish.

d. Rights are inherent, not granted.

Find me that person. Don't care how old they are, what their job is, where they live. That person is a President.

Declaration 2.0

We hold it self-evident that the United States of America is the only country ever founded under the concept that the individual matters. Every preceding country was founded by conquest, and ruled by elites who regarded their population as mere peasants to be managed, controlled, and kept in their places. Not so here. The idea of America transcended race, religion, ethnicity and social class, a concept so radical that an additional war was fought between countrymen some eighty years after America's founding to settle remaining questions. Even today, there is resistance. Some persons just simply don't like the idea of others living freely.

And those persons have become our rulers. The very factions our founders warned us about have coalesced into parties, both of which seek control of the country. One of those parties has become so dangerously anti-freedom that it must, at all costs, be completely replaced and destroyed in the next election cycle. The replacing party, while not so bad, still believes that government is the solution and will, under its four year reign, do as much damage to individual rights as the party they replaced.

This must stop.

Therefore, the people of this country proclaim a pox on both your houses, and advise the politicians, party leaders, government functionaries and bureaucrats that we are mad as hell and are not going to take it anymore. Either you recognize that we, the People, have primacy over your plans and programs and bureaus and regulations, or be prepared to ride feather-covered rails out of town.

Get me?