I agree with most of Paul Krugman’s column on space exploration today. (I admit I read it mainly to see if he could manage to blame Bush. But he didn’t. What a let-down.) Money graf:
Does that mean people should never again go into space? Of course not. Technology marches on: someday we will have a cost-effective way to get people into orbit and back again. At that point it will be worth rethinking the uses of space. I’m not giving up on the dream of space colonization. But our current approach – using hugely expensive rockets to launch a handful of people into space, where they have nothing much to do – is a dead end.
Pity about that final phrase. But the rest makes sense. Charles Krauthammer is a useful book-end to Krugman. His solution: stop the risky ups and downs of the first 150 miles into space and aim much higher.
GERMANY AGAIN: The Times of London’s Michael Gove worries about Germany’s latest ideology – a kind of all purpose Green pacifism. Hmmm:
There has been a tendency among German elites over the past 200 years to invest the ruling ideology of the moment with the quasi-mystical quality of a political religion. Those thinkers who reacted against the French Enlightenment, such as Hegel and Herder, contributed to a romantic, anti-liberal, nationalist temper in 19th-century Germany. The Wilhelmine state which went to war in 1914 was deeply imbued with a mystical sense that its Kultur was superior to the desiccated, rationalist, mercantile outlook of the British and the Americans.
The anti-liberal beliefs which bewitched Germany in the past led to war. The ideology of the ’68 generation may seem altogether more admirable, because it finds expression in opposition to conflict. But it is, at root, just as anti-liberal, and similarly baleful for Germany’s future health. The freedom which the ’68ers oppose is the economic liberalism of America, and their hostility to the US is the animating force in their opposition to action against Iraq.
I actually disagree about Hegel. He was one of the great liberals. But the fact that the Germans completely misread him only furthers Gove’s point, I suppose.
The Dish 