A walk down memory lane brings a stark realization
This afternoon, my son and I watched a documentary titled, “The Wonder of It All.” Let me explain the wizardry of getting a 12-year old to sit down and watch a documentary on a Saturday afternoon without complaint.
I recently saw the trailer for the new movie “Apollo 18″ and I shared it on Facebook. I played the trailer for Alma last night after I came home from work. He started asking questions about the various Apollo moon conspiracies that are out there on the Internet–you know, the ones that say we didn’t actually land or that we sent secret, military missions to the moon. It dawned on me that, since he has been in the world (and this is true for all my kids) all he has ever seen about space is the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. No wonder kids don’t get jazzed about space exploration–we’re not going anywhere!
The shuttles only went to a maximum altitude of about 400 miles and they just went around the earth over and over and over. I don’t mean to minimize the challenges of building a station in space or launching space shuttles, but if Columbus had only gone around in circles in the Atlantic Ocean, history would have been a lot different.
Anyhow, I decided to share with Alma some of the fascination that grabbed boys his age when I was young. I pulled out some long-yellowed newspaper pages that look almost ancient now. They had the headlines and the pictures of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface with the lunar module standing behind them. I showed him a picture of a Saturn V rocket, which took the Apollo space capsule skyward. I think he could hear the wonder in my voice. The rocket was 365 feet tall–tall as a 36 story building. It weighed over seven million pounds. In the first 90 seconds of flight, it went from zero to 6,100 miles per hour. To leave earth orbit, it had to reach an escape velocity of 24,500 miles per hour. That’s almost seven miles per second! That’s about eight times faster than a large-caliber bullet fired from a high-powered rifle.
This all led to watching the documentary, which is about the human part of the moon landings. The documentary featured the astronauts who landed on the moon talking about their feelings and their memories. It wasn’t just about science. It was about the sense of wonder and amazement that was behind it all. It was a very stirring story. Twelve men set foot on the moon. In all of history, these twelve men saw things and experienced things that the rest of us can only dream of. It was inspiring.
Then, as the documentary drew to a close, the astronauts talked somewhat of how they came to cope with life after such a peak experience. Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon talked about a visit he hand his two fellow astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins, made to a university as honored guests. When they arrived, they were surrounded with protesters bearing signs and shouting at them with great hostility. The students and protesters began pelting the astronauts with eggs.
Here’s where the stark realization hit me. During the time of the great achievements of America in the Apollo program, we were still mired in Vietnam. In 1968 was the Tet Offensive. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. Woodstock was going on during the moon landing. The Kent State massacre would occur in less than a year. The country seemed like it was on the edge of revolution.
As I thought, “How terrible!” about those students throwing eggs at the American heroes, it hit me. Those same students–those same radicals–those same draft-dodging, draft-card burning, hippies–they are the people who are in charge right now. All of Barack Obama’s underlings are from that milieu. They were members of the Weather Underground. They were members of Students for a Democratic Society. They are the ones who now man the liberal and progressive policy factories like the Center for American Progress, the now-defunct-but-regrouping-under-another-name ACORN. They dominate the teachers unions and they are the college professors that teach try to bully students out of their religion and the moral training they received from their parents.
As I heard Aldrin’s description of the shock at the violent reactions of these students, I realized that this is now the generation that has come to power. They are the ones behind the wheel, gleefully driving America off a cliff, hoping that they may reshape the nation in their radical image.
From the wonderful and warm feelings I shared with my son, telling him about the noble achievements of the Americans who sent men to the moon, to the horrible realization that we have been tricked into handing the car keys to the insolent, spoiled, contemptuous, and deprave people who would throw eggs at America’s heroes–it was a sobering moment. It explains a lot.
If I am to give my sons, daughters, and my grandchildren a future and a country that will be as noble and hopeful as the Apollo program, we have to take the car keys back now and put people in charge who cherish what was once honorable and decent about America.
Greg West
