Monthly Archives: May 2021

A confluence of events has drawn renewed attention to the 1960s-era race to the Moon between the United States and the Soviet Union. Last Wednesday, Michael Collins, the command module pilot for the Apollo 11 mission that first landed men on the moon, died at the age of 90.

Collins and his fellow astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong ran the final leg in a relay that began eight years earlier, when Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5, 1961. Since six decades have passed since the United States entered the Space Age, its worth a look back to remember the pioneering accomplishments of the crews both in space and back on earth that led to this historic triumph.

A graduate of West Point, Collins joined the Air Force in 1952, and his years as a fighter and test pilot made him eligible to apply for the astronaut corps. NASA selected Collins among its third group of astronauts in 1963; his first mission in space, the July 1966 Gemini 10 mission, successfully demonstrated orbital rendezvous and docking a critical component of any trip to the moon.

The Apollo 11 mission put all the lessons that Collins and NASA had learned in Gemini to the test. It also saw Collins occupy a unique role, as he orbited the moon in the command module Columbia while Armstrong and Aldrin traveled down to the surface in the lunar module Eagle. That role made Collins one of the few Westerners alive at the time who couldnt watch the lunar landing as it happened, as he didnt have access to a television aboard Columbia.

Every time Collins orbited around the back side of the moon out of reach of any radio signal from Earth he was, as he wrote, truly alone and absolutely alone from any known life. While he said at the time of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission that he experienced exultation during his day of solitude in space, Collins also spent that time pondering his worst fear: That a mechanical failure aboard Eagle would prevent Aldrin and Armstrong from rejoining him, forcing him to return to Earth alone.

As Collins wrote at the time:

My secret terror for the last six months has been leaving them on the Moon and returning to Earth alone; now I am within minutes of finding out the truth of the matter.If they fail to rise from the surface, or crash back into it, I am not going to commit suicide; I am coming home, forthwith, but I will be a marked man for life and I know it.

Fortunately, such a fate met neither Collins nor his colleagues. Collins retired from the astronaut corps following Apollo 11, ultimately heading the National Air and Space Museum during seven critical years (1971-78) that saw the construction and opening of Washingtons most-visited museum. As his Apollo comrade Aldrin eulogized of him last week, Collinss public service exemplified the best of America, someone who instinctively put himself out for others, a lifetime commitment.

Collinss role in the historic Apollo 11 mission of 1969 came about in no small part due to the feats and decisions of individuals eight years earlier. Sixty years ago this week, Mercury 7 astronaut Shepard became the first American in space, with a suborbital flight on a Mercury Redstone rocket what amounted to a slightly modified ballistic missile.

Rather than delivering a nuclear warhead to the Soviet Union, the Redstone carried a human payload that would start Americas voyage of discovery in space. Politically minded observers thought it little surprise that Shepard, a graduate of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, would get chosen as the first American to enter into space the better for NASA to please President John Kennedy, a Navy man himself.

Americans did receive a surprise, however, when, three weeks before Shepards mission, the Soviets beat the United States into space, placing Yuri Gagarin into orbit. The Project Mercury astronauts fumed, as NASAs caution the agency insisted on adding another test flight with a chimpanzee before putting a human aboard a Redstone prevented the American space program from launching the first man into space.

NASA quickly recovered from the setback, however, as Kennedy used an address to Congress three weeks after Shepards flight to set an audacious goal for the space program: I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

Collins helped accomplish that goal, within the allotted time frame, in July 1969. Shepard also played an important role in the Apollo program. After persistent vertigo grounded him from flights in 1963, experimental surgery in early 1969 resolved the condition. Shepard returned to flight status in time to participate in the Apollo 14 mission, 50 years ago this past February.

Shepards biggest claim to fame from his time on the moon came in the form of an implement common to weekend duffers. After smuggling the head of a golf club into space in a sock, he attached it to one of his rock-collecting tools and took a couple of swings on live television (while he claimed the balls went for miles and miles and miles in the thin lunar gravity, analysis conducted as part of this years 50th anniversary suggests the balls only traveled a few dozen yards).

As the nation continues to rebound from COVID lockdowns, it seems fitting that the Air and Space Museum will become the first Smithsonian museum to reopen this Wednesday. The museum Collins helped bring to fruition will host the 60th anniversary celebration for Shepards flight, with the public getting to see his Freedom 7 spacecraft for the first time ever at the museums expansive Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center outside D.C. in Chantilly, Virginia.

While astronauts like Shepard and Collins performed incredible feats under pressure in space, NASAs success during the Space Race also came from the hard work and dedication of hundreds of thousands of individuals on the ground. Scientists and engineers of all shapes and sizes male and female, black as well as white worked to achieve a common goal.

The Space Race did not come without setbacks, most notably the tragic Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts during a launch pad test in January of 1967. But in the end, the exploration of space expanded human knowledge while serving as an important source of pride during the Cold War an impressive legacy of Americans historic achievement.

Read the rest here:

60 Years Ago, Alan Shepard Became The First American In Space - The Federalist

It cannot be harped on enough. Critical race theory, a left-wing movement proclaiming the idea that the United States is systemically racist, is rifling through the American education system. Children are held hostage by handsomely paid administrators, teachers are forced to attend racially extremist trainings hosted by for-profit groups, and parents are left in the dark to contact media outlets and assume the role of a whistleblower.

As president, Donald Trump signed an executive order in November 2020 to launch a 1776 Commission comprised of 18 individuals an initiative he should have taken on far earlier in his term.

Despite the virtues and accomplishments of this Nation, many students are now taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but rather villains, the White House wrote of the commission. This radicalized view of American history lacks perspective, obscures virtues, twists motives, ignores or distorts facts, and magnifies flaws, resulting in the truth being concealed and history disfigured.

But, as was foreseeable given the Democratic Partys increasing push for the lie of institutional racism, President Joe Biden canceled the commission on day 1. In its place, Bidens order claims, Our country faces converging economic, health, and climate crises that have exposed and exacerbated inequities, while a historic movement for justice has highlighted the unbearable human costs of systemic racism It is therefore the policy of my Administration that the Federal Government should pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.

This word salad, an obfuscating juxtaposition of concepts such as equity and equality that denote separate things, was a predictable step for the Biden administration to take. The order declares that equality of opportunity is moot due to systemic racism a claim that requires unpresentable evidence Americas institutions are entirely discriminatory but then says the way to address this systemic imbalance is to abandon equality in favor of equity (redistributed equality of outcome).

If Democrats wish to convince Americans the United States remains institutionally racist like during Jim Crow,it only makes sense they would move to be as vague as possible while pushing buzzwords to evoke emotion. It is precisely what the White House did after the conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. Biden and Harris sought to craft an image of systemic racism through imagery and pathos.

We still must reform the system This work is long overdue. America has a long history of systemic racism. Black Americans and Black men, in particular have been treated, throughout the course of our history, as less than human, Harris said.

It was a murder in full light of day, and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism the vice president just referred to, Biden said. This systemic racism is a stain on our nations soul. The knee on the neck of justice for black Americans, profound fear and trauma, the pain, the exhaustion that black and brown Americans experience every single day.

This brings us back to critical race theory. A plan put forth by the Biden administration on April 19 directly cites race extremist Ibram X. Kendi and the ahistorical New York Times 1619 Project to argue school funding should go to schools across the country working to incorporate anti-racist practices into teaching and learning.

The plan operates under the guise of civics education and says encouraging and funding identity politics in Americas classrooms is a step toward protecting the Nations democracyespecially at a time when its core institutions and values are threatened by misinformation.

The Department of Education notes it is fielding the responses of Americans until May 19 about this plan, but the Biden administration already reinstated an order Trump struck to grant federal funding to institutions performing critical race theory, white privilege training, or other diversity training. It is doubtless the agencys plan will proceed, especially given Secretary of Education Miguel Cardonas extensive history in Connecticut overseeing far-left curricula.

Without a doubt, the White House is conflating essential U.S. civics education with programs backed by prominent cult figures, like Kendi and Nikole Hannah-Jones of the 1619 Project, that only pits students against one another and promulgates a tense, racialized, and illiberal culture. The sort of culture that splits us off into our realms, tiptoeing away from one another due to the false advertisement of implicit bias.

Think back on the Biden narrative that legacy media constantly pushes. Supposedly, Americans are in for a return to normalcy that will foster unity, since it is a time to heal. Biden has been branded as boring old Joe from Scranton, Pennsylvania the veteran politician who has all the keys to the castle in how to shepherd the United States back to what leftists consider appropriate.

But recognizing the presidents position on critical race theory lays this hypothesis to rest. Biden is no boring president; he is governing from the far-left. There is no return to normalcy or unity on the table unless of course racial division is your definition of a positive culture.

The very idea of critical race theory, that we are not to be judged by our individual thoughts and beliefs, but by our skin color, is at the root of the systemic racism doctrine and equity strategy the Biden administration has championed. Its the very definition of divisive.

Critical race theorys tenets are antithetical to any realistic conversations of unity in America. The White Houses efforts will only expand the role of government atomizing and alienating the American people.

Follow this link:

White House Support Of Critical Race Theory Debunks Biden's 'Unity' - The Federalist

Five noteworthy books recently published seem, at first or second glance, to be totally unrelated to one another. Collectively, however, they address critical public issues in remarkably well-researched and illuminating ways.

Each addresses monumental, even foundational human issues intimately related to what it means to be human, how we order our lives together at the most basic level, and the nature of truth and how we can know it. Taken together, they provide a unique and much-needed perspective on what matters in an age of increasingly prevalent lies.

Consider putting them on your summer reading list, or diving in right now.

The first book is the most consequential because it speaks to the first command given to humanity. It also speaks to the primary driver of the evolutionary construct: go forth and multiply. Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline is meticulously researched and explicated by two secular Canadian demographers, who systematically mount a damning case that, rather than overpopulation being the most serious problem facing humanity, the truth is the precise opposite.

Their unapologetic case is that the overpopulation scare is completely, utterly wrong. Based on an impressive array of diversely authoritative data sources, they explain, We do not face the challenge of a population bomb, but of a bust a relentless, generation-after-generation culling of the human herd. Much of the book is devoted to why once that decline begins, it will never end. The diversity of approaches they take in demonstrating their case is refreshing.

For these researchers, from this demographic moment, the natural end of the world will realize itself toward the end of the century, resulting from too few people becoming moms and dads today. Since publication, their assertion received support in the form of newly published demographic research funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The reports findings show humanitys population topping out and then shrinking by the end of this century in far more troubling numbers than anyone previously anticipated.

This curiously titled book by two busy activist wives and mothers from Seattle (and Federalist regulars) is a clarion call for us to think differently about how and why we form the families we do. The book presents a well-reasoned, pointedly argued case that adult desire, regardless of how pure and loving it claims to be, does not always lead to the healthiest family forms for children. No punches are pulled in making the case that Love makes a family is a wrong-headed sentiment that harms children and adults alike.

Whats noteworthy about this book is that it takes on both same-sex and heterosexual family forms, arguing afresh for the fundamental integrity of what family ought to be once we simply stop to consider the troubling choices we are making when adult desire is placed before what children genuinely need.

The startling truth is that every child has a right to the love and care of the mother and father who created him. If this not possible, the replacement family form should approximate this ideal as closely as possible. They demonstrate that every form of the celebrated modern family gay or straight is ultimately illegitimate if it denies the child this basic right.

Also asserted by the authors is that no adult has a right to a child that is not his or her biological offspring. As such, every departure from the married-mother-father household is, at its core, a threat to the rights of children.

Its not only single-parenting by choice or same-sex families that create this problem. They properly take on the divorce culture as well as the exploding and unregulated sperm/egg donation-surrogacy industrial complex as equally problematic for society and children.

All of these emerging, complicated issues are addressed together in a thoughtful way and with clarity, conviction, and compassion, making it one of the most important and ideologically challenging books on family formation in decades. An absolute must-read for all students of the family.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, many good people have grown tired of many things face masks being one of them. Secular pulpit pounders like Neil deGrasse Tyson who make unscientific claims about the absolutist power of science with nearly religious zeal are another.

Michael Strevens, a leading philosopher of science at New York University, has written an incredibly important book that all fans of science and human knowledge should read. The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science is a refreshing offering from an unapologetically pro-science intellectual who carefully outlines both the remarkable powers and epistemic limits of science.

Strevenss seemingly counter-intuitive subtitle could have easily been The Humbling of Scientism. He gives his reader a hint of sciences limits in the titles of his second and third chapters: Human Frailty and The Essential Subjectivity of Science.

Strevenss confident humility about the glory and wonder of science allows him to put these two things together. When ideologues say science is the way we know anything, they demonstrate their misunderstanding and overstatement of what science is: one tool among many that can help guide us towards the truth. Ultimately, science has its limits, and its certainly not the truth itself.

The Knowledge Machine offers a refreshing explanation that while science is remarkably powerful and has produced stunning advances that have improved human existence in innumerable ways, it isnt more than it is. Science is a knowledge machine used by fallible people who will inevitability bring their prejudices and presuppositions to the task in varying degrees.

In fact, as a man who has committed his life to the study of science, he tells us science is far from the only thought system capable of generating novel and original ideas. Indeed, Stevens isnt shy in saying Philosophy, for example, is its equal in this respect. What makes science unique from, but not superior to philosophy, is its unparalleled ability to test those ideas thoroughly. But it is not foolproof by any measure.

Strevens calls us to praise science, but not worship it. So it goes with all scientific reasoning: The interpretation of evidence demands likelihoods, and scientists are not only permitted, but encouraged to use their subjective plausibility rankings in that role.We could use more of this kind of intellectual humility today.

The transgender issue has taken the world by storm with head-spinning speed across the globe, sucking up nearly all the oxygen in the culture war room.

Few people are writing on this development with the kind of razor-sharp incisiveness as writer Abigail Shrier. In Irreversible Damage, Shrier details an extremely troubling and anti-human trend that has developed in the last few years with our girls and its more than just about the trans issue.

Increasingly, girls suddenly dont want to be girls anymore and important power centers are taking incredibly dangerous and ill-advised medical steps to help them actively destroy their physical and mental womanhood. Its not even that they want to become boys, but that disturbing numbers of them want to be nothing.

Shrier explains these girls want to be seen as queer They flee womanhood like a house on fire, their minds fixed on escape, not on any particular destination. So whats happening here?

Shrier is highlighting the trans craze, not as merely a curious and trendy hop across the river from female to male or vice versa, but a wholly new kind of misogyny. The words of one leading therapist caring for gender dysphoric patients are emblematic of what Shrier has been witnessing. The young girls this therapist sees at her clinic are in great emotional pain.

A common response that I get from female clients is something along these lines: I dont know exactly that I want to be a guy. I just know I dont want to be a girl, she explains. Something very profound and troubling is happening to what it means to be one essential half of humanity. We would do well to get to the bottom of it and root it out.

Irreversible Damage is a chilling examination of this troubling development among our girls and a pointed challenge to the irresponsible ways far too many adults are uncritically responding to it.

It has long been a fundamental tenet of faith among leftists that fundamentalism is very bad. But what many on the left have failed to understand is that fundamentalism comes in varied shapes and sizes, and they have their own form of it.

Two professors from Northwestern University demonstrate just how true, and dangerous, this fact is in their new volume from Princeton University Press: Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us.

The books pluralization of fundamentalisms is important, as its authors lament fundamentalism abounds and is no longer the singular domain of those people. These authors give a lucid explanation of how the term is not just for caricatured backwoods, white Southern Protestant yokels anymore. People across the political spectrum are unthinkingly adhering to and mouthing political rhetoric that seems to have bypassed their critical thinking faculties, all with increasingly high-pitched (and confident) moral pronouncements.

Minds Wide Shut notes Democracy cannot long survive under these conditions of the new fundamentalists, explaining, if right is all on one side if one is absolutely certain that there is nothing to learn from those with whom we disagree then there is no reason not to have a one-party state. Thus, whatever can be done to neutralize the power of the people you disagree with becomes not only permissible but actually moral. People with minds that work this way are dangerous, they note.

The book closes quoting Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who held that War is the continuation of politics by other means. The growth of the new fundamentalisms has us entering an era when politics seems to be conducted as a war by other means. And our politics is increasingly dominated by new fundamentalist thinking [that] is utopian, if not apocalyptic. It is dictated by one [who] knows the truth and those who disagree are ignorant, evil, or insane. All goodness belongs to ones own camp.

Does that sound like anything you have been witnessing of late? Welcome to the new fundamentalism in many ways more brutal and dangerous than older fundamentalisms of the past, as its more convinced of its moral superiority. It doesnt merely wag its finger and look askance at your behavior; it crushes with its fist and obliterates you from public life.

See the rest here:

5 Books Culturally Aware Americans Should Read This Summer - The Federalist