The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man. – G K Chesterton
This is why I sometimes say I’m the last democrat on Earth – because I understand that if God did create us (and He did) then a democratic system is a necessity. Someone will now object here: but, Mark, you also have said that you are essentially a Monarchist! This is true. I believe it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said that the test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold to two contradictory opinions in mind and not go insane. So, maybe I’m just first rate?
Probably not! But there is no real contradiction here. And a huge part of the problem is that people think there is. That is, both Monarchists and democrats have fought each other quite bloodily on the assertion that there is a contradiction between Monarchy and Democracy when there really isn’t. But then you ponder it a bit and you understand that they weren’t really fighting against each other…they were fighting to hold all power. And neither a Democracy nor a Monarchy may reasonably hold all power. Only God can hold all of it.
The UK was supposed to be a model for sane government: a synthesis of Monarchy and Democracy – and for a while, it was. So sane that it managed with minimal effort to conquer one fourth of the world’s landmass and totally dominated the seas. There was a King and there was voting and there was hereditary nobility and big business and the Church and an independent judiciary and a free press and while there were problems there are always problems and the darned contraption worked. And it was the Reform Act of 1832 which set the UK on the path to self destruction.
Don’t get me wrong, there was need for serious reform – especially in getting rid of what were called the “Rotten Boroughs” where a handful of Electors would send a man to Parliament, often via straight up purchase. Meanwhile, huge communities in the UK had little or no representation at all. Needed to be fixed. The problem wasn’t what was fixed, but what was broken in the fixing…the franchise was extended to renters. Now, to be sure, you had to pay what was at the time a pretty hefty rent…which means you simply had to be a well off, middle class person. But the key was the law finally saying that non-landowners get the franchise. Once that was done, no way that everyone else wasn’t going to eventually get the vote. How can you possibly say ‘no’? Once the cat is out of the bag, it is out of the bag.
And in 1867 was another Reform Act extending the franchise to urban workers – higher paid urban workers, but still lower class. And the 1884 Reform extended it further. And the 1918 Reform yet further…and on and on and on until every Tom, Dick and Harry in Great Britain who is breathing at the time of an election gets to vote. And now with everyone voting all fair and square the UK has its largest cities under the control of recent migrants while the laws say you’re under arrest if you make a meme on social media…and you’re also disarmed in the face of a knife-wielding migrant lunatic. From ruling one fourth of the world to hiding at home in silence…all done by voting! They just happened to vote for suicide.
Turns out, having Viscount Twiddle-Dee sitting in the House of Lords by right of inheritance was more conducive to liberty than having Prime Minister Tweedle-Dum elected by universal suffrage. You see, Twiddle-Dee had only limited power while Tweedle-Dum’s power is unlimited. Therein lies the problem…not so much who has the power, but how much power the person has. That some nitwit heir of a noble house is in the Lords is far less a problem to the average Nigel than the police knocking on his door to ask him about a meme posted on X.
The USA is a little different, of course. The USA is different from everyone. Nobody better forget Bismarck’s statement about there being a special providence for fools, drunkards and the United States of America. We are the invented country. A bunch of guys sat down in 1776 and declared it into existence and then returned in 1787 to declare it now had a government with such and such limited powers. Nobody had ever seen anything like this and nobody ever really would again. That is, no class of rulers – even rebel rulers – was ever going to make the Founder’s mistake: limiting the power of government. People who look at government simply can’t stand the thought that there’s something it can’t do…that there is an element of life simply outside the competence of government. But this is why the USA rose to global dominance pretty much in tandem with the decline of British dominance even though from Day One the franchise was fairly extensive in the USA and became more so over time. Why didn’t this kill us as badly as it was killing the UK? Because, as noted, the powers of the US government were limited…you couldn’t, via votes, obtain all power. Even if you controlled all 3 branches of government you didn’t have all power. You had a lot! But not all. And so the thing worked…until people decided to act like they did have all power.
The first person to do this was actually Teddy Roosevelt but his imagination was small…he set his sights on national parks and the Panama Canal. Wilson had a much grander vision on the uses of total power but even he wasn’t completely brazen about it. FDR was. There was simply nothing that FDR would ever say was outside his purview. Once in office he just did whatever he wanted, confident that a Congress controlled by his Party would never stop him and that it would eventually bring the Judiciary to heel (and he was right about this). FDR’s successors just followed along – usurping one power after another that didn’t belong to them, using bribery (ie, taxpayer subsidy) to obtain compliance at the State level (another brake on total power in the USA – the States are sovereign). Mostly it was done by promising at election time that every good thing would come to you if you voted the right way – and people by and large went along with it because they simply couldn’t see, in a broad majority, that the government with the power to give is the government with the power to take away. In short, the overwhelming majority of people – of all political stripes – were simply incapable of determining the best course of action…because they were being asked to decided the entire course of action.
Do understand that – it is totally reasonable for limited people to make decisions about limited things. In fact, this is the way it must be for a rational society. Only I can determine what color to paint my house…just as only I can decide who I want to marry, who I want as friends…on and on. It is when I propose to decide things for you that the limitations must come in…and the higher up we go (person, family, extended family, social group, town, county, State, nation) there must be continually increased limitations on what you can do (ie, “Congress shall make no law”). We’re human beings. Amazingly strong but also pathetically weak. We can’t know enough to make decisions on everything. And the whole failure of the world – what you see all around you in the USA and the entire world – is the logical conclusion of trying to get people to decide on everything.
To get back to the Reform Act of 1832, the fatal flaw in it was not limiting the power of government. Britain, famously, has no actual written Constitution. It is just the unrepealed acts of Parliament plus judicial precedent. It would take far too long a time to explain why it was like this but the bottom line is that the whole fight was between Parliament and King and it all worked out until the King was made a political cipher. Now it wasn’t a fight between King and Parliament but between Parliament and itself. There was no practical limitation on the power of Parliament except for the fact that the franchise was limited and so only people with a substantial stake in the community could direct the government. By extending the franchise without limiting the power the British set up the nightmare they have now. They really needed a First and Second amendment…and these should have been inserted in the Reform Act along with some provision making it nearly impossible to repeal. But, they didn’t see it. Because the people involved weren’t interested in sanity, but in how to get more power (essentially, the Reform people felt that they’d be rewarded with power for extending the franchise…and they were right).
We all know that unlimited government power is bad. We need to limit government; it must be kept in close constraints and strictly limited powers lest it get large enough to destroy us, the people it was created to serve (remember that: we institute government to secure our rights…not give us a welfare check!). But we can’t have limited government unless we limit the people, too. As per usual in human affairs, its not 100% one way or the other. It is a little bit of both. Human affairs requiring striking a balance, film at 11.
We must balance the need for responsible government with the need for limited government. Some years back a friend of mine bought a house he was going to rent out but, naturally, it needed cleaning and painting before that happened. For a variety of reasons he couldn’t get to the cleaning in a timely manner and asked if I’d help him out. Sure: that’s what friends are for. Plus, as he was going to paint it was really just a matter of cleaning sinks and bathtubs and so forth. I decided to start in the master bath and as I walked in, I noticed that the shower enclosure seemed an odd color…it was kind of a brownish grey and not at all nice looking. But, hey: who am I to judge? Someone wants a nasty color on their bathroom, not my concern. But when I go close and examined it I found that it wasn’t brownish grey…it was a white shower.
The house was about twenty five years old at the time and had one owner prior to my friend purchasing it. I scraped my fingernail along the brownish grey and it peeled off and I realized that the prior owner had never, not even once, cleaned their shower. They had used it year after year after year with it getting increasingly coated with soap and oil and dead skin particles and it never occurred to them that it might be time to hit the thing with a bit of a cleanser. Just absolutely nauseating. And it took me the better part of an hour to get all that gunk off.
But here’s why I’m telling you about this: that person who used that filthy, disgusting, unsanitary shower gets to vote. Just like I do. Just as much power as I have…and, like me, he’s voting for a government which has – or at least wants to have – total power over everyone. The guy who is so lazy he won’t even clean his darned shower gets to decide if I get to live, ultimately. Because that is what government power ultimately is, guys: the power to kill. We’re deciding who gets to kill and under what circumstances. Might not seem like that, but that is what it is. Filthy shower guy/Me = same/same. No, sorry; it ain’t. Filthy shower guy shouldn’t be deciding anything…for heaven’s sake, he can’t even decide to clean his shower.
We’re going to have to limit things, my friends. The only path to a limited government which secures our rights is a government which is under the control of people with some sense and responsibility. Unlimited voting just means unlimited power and power corrupts. Always.
We need a series of laws which restrict the franchise. Everyone can come up with their preferences here and we can debate and then enact, but some limitation on what the people can do is necessary if we are to have a government limited in what it can do. I would start with a basic literacy and civics test – to register to vote you have to write out the preamble to the Constitution and then answer some pretty simple questions about the government: name 3 Justices of the Supreme Court, name the current Speaker of the House, how many States are there…I’m not talking genius level stuff here, guys. Just something that lets us know you’re literate and have some concept of the government you are voting to empower. After that, I’d also remove the franchise for all fit, adult persons between the ages of 18 and 67 who receive 50% or more of their income from government (active duty military would be excluded from this restriction). Basically, if you live off government – even (and especially) by working for government – you have a vested interest in government power and thus a conflict of interest in your vote…so you don’t get to vote. And by “living off government” I do mean even if you work for a State-supported school, NGO, etc. And anyone can restore their voting rights by getting off the government dime. It is a matter of personal choice – because remember that I said “fit”…if you can work and choose to be on welfare well, that is your choice…and you’ve chosen disenfranchised dependency.
It will have to be. Civilization cannot survive without this. It is only a matter of time before this happens – and it would be better if we controlled it rather than waiting for someone else, perhaps hostile to us, to make it happen.
Blogs For Victory 
You say this because:
A: you skimmed through my piece and didn’t actually try to understand it.
B: you think that Democracy is voting. It ain’t. Democracy is self-rule. And the first step in self-rule is ruling yourself…that is, being a sober, responsible, hard working, law abiding and tidy person who can be relied upon by others. If you can’t do this, then, no, you shouldn’t get a say in government…lazy, irresponsible, lawless bums should not be telling us what to do. Not even a little bit.
A: you still didn’t read it even though I gave you a second chance.
B: you’ll be freer under my system than yours. Under mine, you can’t be voted off the island (as it were), under yours if I’m deemed socially unacceptable I’m doomed.
It’s kind of funny, in a sad way, that you still think a response to a click-seeking troll is going to make any difference. Although I think you might be doing the same thing I do sometimes if a post gives me a chance to make a point, not necessarily thinking my point will penetrate the troll’s hive mind but just to get it out there.
Figured I’d give him his chance – total waste of time, of course. Maybe someday!
It’s always a waste of time.
Every one of his posts raises the same question: Is he really that stupid, or is he trying to goad us into a response to correct him so he can have the satisfaction of either clicks or gotchas?
And to me, the answer to the question is in two parts. One is that we need to remember the power of “and” and the other is that I refuse to get sucked into the obvious game.
I do have a caveat, however. There have been a couple of times when a “rocks” post has touched upon something current that I think would benefit from an explanation for the lurkers out there who read the blog but don’t participate, and then I have expounded on my theme in the pretense of responding to the troll. Aside from that, I refuse to give him the clicks or the attention.
The ONLY thing of value in his spewing is the constant reminder of the dependence on Identity Politics of him and his ilk. It’s always something about a person, because the Jerry Springer mentality needs the drama/melodrama of a blog equivalent of throwing chairs and that is what appeals and gratifies.
There is nothing wrong with a Representative Democracy if in fact, the representatives actually represent. Career politicians are the problem America faces. They do not represent the concerns of their districts or constituents. AOC is a good example … crime and homelessness in her district has exploded since she has been on the seen and yet she is being promoted now possibly to Senator AOC. See the problem?
Again, this is not the fault per se of those politicians but of a voting base that has been trained to vote in lockstep for its tribe, and the tribe represents (to them) intellectual and moral superiority and resistance to an Invented Other.
Sure, they all (the voters and politicians) go through the same elaborate charade of “campaigning” with its attendant promises, though if you look at the promises of this tribe they tend to be promises to enact some kind of retribution on that Invented Other. The promises don’t matter—it’s really about the brand of the tribe and the message of “AGAINST” and not about wanting or even voting for solutions to real problems.
Look at AOC–she is not even talking about crime or homelessness, just about being “AGAINST” an Invented Other. And when you have successfully shifted the discourse from competing IDEAS to competing PEOPLE all you have to do is demonize the other people, while hoping no one takes a hard look at the ideas that underlie your party dogma.
That’s how they build their political careers. By appeasing donors, lobbyists, PAC’s, and getting air time in the media. Politicians goals are too advance their own career and public posture by either getting reelected (of which donor money is important), or moving on to becoming a lobbyist or media pundit. Either way, their goal is to move upward and onward from the beginning with no regard to their constituents. Term limits may help resolve this, but the other extremely important component is an honest, objective media. Currently, there is a very incestuous relationship with politics and media that is really harming this country which brings us back to Mark’s contention that we can not tolerate lies. It’s a mess
The thing is, these people could not become so entrenched if they had to appeal to the people by defining and defending the core POLITICAL premises of their party and position. They get into their offices by appealing to a dumbed-down populace that views “politics” is just another Jerry Springer episode where they pick sides based on their perceptions of PEOPLE, true politics be damned, and vote based on tribal identity and the success of their demagogues in inventing and demonizing an imaginary Other.
The genius of the Founders was their ability to understand that there is no perfect government system…so, they blended elements of monarchy, democracy and oligarchy. This way everyone actually had a fair shot of not just having their views heard, but set into policy. Nobody was to get everything they wanted, nobody was to get nothing. Of course, human nature being what it is, as soon as the ink was dry on the Constitution people started trying to work their way around it. Still, for quite a long while it all held up…people forget that we used to actually have Presidents who would veto legislation simply because they viewed the act as unconstitutional (checks and balances means all three branches are involved in checking and balancing…it isn’t just for the Supreme Court to decree what is constitutionally valid). The problem comes in from universal suffrage – that, in my view, was a mistake: and it was something never envisioned by the Founders.
I think it was Salisbury who noted that the common people won’t elect first rate men and first rate men wouldn’t ask common people to vote for them. This was an oversimplification on his part (he was arguing against yet another extension of the franchise – this one backed by the Tory leadership which was convinced if they did it, the people would reward them with power – didn’t work; they got whacked at the next election). But there was truth in what he was saying – especially as, very often, the best people are off-putting. Douglas MacArthur was a prime example of this – naturally after he started to roll up victories in WWII he was touted as a possible Presidential candidate for the GOP in 1944 or 1948. And while MacArthur had captured the public imagination and was a genuine hero to the American people, he entirely lacked that touch which convinced people to vote for him…his candidacy never went anywhere. Meanwhile, Eisenhower, not nearly as accomplished, was pretty much elevated to the White House as soon as he asked in a landslide…because he was a very likeable person. Everyone could see that MacArthur was a genius who figured things out three days before you did…Ike was just one of the boys.
But outside a prejudice against excellence – and it is wise to mistrust people who are really too good at things…it can lead to arrogance and a Caesar or Napoleon – the pragmatic facts of life are that when those with the least knowledge and least stake in the country are given power, they are easy prey for the demagogue. The slick talking con man who promises the Moon. The purveyors of hatred. The Pied Pipers of national destruction…these are what get into power when you allow everyone to vote. It isn’t that the people don’t want good leaders, it is that good leaders don’t have a chance except in bizarre circumstances (like Churchill in 1940…or Trump in 2024). The good people will be chopped to pieces by the bad people…to the applause of an ignorant mob who thinks its funny when a Bill Clinton dodges legal bullets.
So, as I said: restrict the franchise. Limited government via limited people.
Another self absorbed candidate is running to be Governor, which reminds of the other problem we have in this society …. Narcissism. It’s rampant, and unwarranted. They also love to play the victim card …
‘We deeply appreciate everyone who understands that it is tough as a woman entering politics to get some to recognize your achievements and the value you provide to the people of Alabama,’ Wadsworth added.
”it is tough as a woman” … give me a fucking break. In 2025, women get every break imaginable and are already dominating many industries including government. I can guarantee much of her current success is directly because she is a woman. Politicians should be humble … and that’s not her
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14783919/alabama-real-estate-agent-demands-lieutenant-governor.html
Their whole worldview is based upon some very fake things…combined with an astonishing misunderstanding of the world. In her case, the claim that going into politics is the large and difficult thing. It ain’t. As G K Chesterton put it in What’s Wrong With the World? (Part Three: Feminism, or the Mistake about Woman, III, The Emancipation of Domesticity):
That’s where feminism gets it wrong – it didn’t seek to lift up women as women, but to get them to do things men were already doing. Not that there is anything wrong with a woman astronaut or doctor. Women can be excellent astronauts or doctors. But we already had such – adding more to the mix doesn’t really change anything. What would change things would be greater help for women in the area of being a woman…that is, more support for the mother. After all, giving birth is the absolutely most important thing human beings can do, and only women can do it. If we don’t do it, we don’t have a future. Unless we want to die out (which some advanced thinkers on the Left do want), we have to have kids…and only women can have them…and kids are a gigantic burden and the women who raise them well are doing a gigantic task. How about a little help in that area? And I’m not talking about providing a stranger to watch the kid while mom goes to work in a cubicle…I’m talking about help in the raising of the kids.
To make it clear to any Liberal out there: this doesn’t mean a woman can’t have a career. Knock yourself out! Do whatever you want to do. But being a doctor is not a feminine thing. It was traditionally considered a solely male thing but that was wrong – of course women could always be doctors and should have been able to become doctors all along and it is good that women can become doctors. But that is just becoming another doctor. Important. Not crucial. Not a specifically feminine thing. Feminism wanted to make women like men…it should have been about honoring the feminine.
And I think you are giving the masses way too much credit for assuming there are thought processes in play at all, much less any as complex as those you outline.
We are talking about a voter base so superficial that it bases its votes on the trivial and/or on petty gossip and character assassination. These are people so vapid that they base their votes on silliness like the color of Trump’s skin (just look at the various themes of “orange man” out there, still forming the basis of attacks on Trump) or his hair, or (when there is a desire to try to appear “moral”) on his actions a decade ago. How many of the attacks on Trump (and excuses for voting against him) contain the word “felon”?
There’s no thinking going on here. None of these people are evaluating the meaning of, or state of, “feminism”. No, they are rooting around in the garbage fed to them by the Complicit Agenda Media looking for something smelly and distasteful enough to dig up and chew on and salivate over. They chortle in mindless glee over epithet like “Cheeto Man” because to them this is not only the epitome of wit it is a reason to vote for someone in their tribe to illustrate their indignation and fury.
The biggest challenge to the leaders of the Left is dumbing down their message enough to reach the most voters possible. They have been doing an excellent job of this, but a few in the target demographic are starting to see the defects in this strategy and starting to actually THINK, and therefore are abandoning the tribe. But still, the level of intelligence keeps dropping.
Just look at who they have appointed as their elite intellectual—ELIZABETH WARREN of all people! Lyin’ Lizzie, Fauxchahontas herself, is the designated hitter for the Left now, when they want to posture as the Smart Ones. She’s typically awful at it (she accused John Kennedy of getting his college degrees from cereal boxes, no doubt a real thigh-slapper that got a lot of giggles and titters when she tried it out in her little group of sycophants, and then had to sit there while he gently informed her that Oxford degrees don’t come in cereal boxes.) I waited for him to go on to say he also got accepted to Oxford on his merits and educational record, not by lying about his heritage, but he refrained. Sad emojis.
This Trump/Musk dust up is kind of funny and of course the media and Democrats are making hay with it, but I sense a big yawn from MAGA including myself. I think Mush overreacted big time re: the bill … is it perfect, NO, but it is what we can get right now and it’s a move in the right direction. As Mark said, I trust Trump too. Elon is use to running his own companies and doing exactly what he wants … government is not like that. Government is a game of incremental wins, and this is one. Calm down Elon.
On the other hand, buy Tesla stock NOW. I have bought quite a bit in the last month. Anything under $300/share for Tesla is a great investment.
Musk is on the autism spectrum, with Asperger’s. It seems to be mild with him but it is marked by impulsiveness, so I can understand a rather unrestrained reaction to a bill that appears to be ignoring all the work he did, and his public announcements, in retaining so much of the spending he truly thought he was instrumental in stopping.
Trump, on the other hand, responded with his trademark heavy-handedness, instead of just saying something like “I don’t blame Elon for being upset that we weren’t able to act on his excellent advice, but I hope he will trust us and be patient”. No, Trump had to say Elon’s reaction might mean the end of their friendship.
As for the other claims, they come through the Complicit Agenda Media, which would like nothing better than to humiliate Musk and destroy this amazing team.
“Trump further suggested he may terminate U.S. government contracts and subsidies given to Musk’s companies.” If this is true, then Musk is acting like an irritated citizen handed a bill he doesn’t like and Trump is acting like a bully, using the power of the federal government to strike back. If this is true, then Musk wins on character.
As Matt Margolis says:
Let’s be clear: Elon Musk isn’t lashing out for selfish reasons—he’s raising red flags because he sees real problems in how parts of this bill were handled. Musk has built world-changing companies and if he’s sounding the alarm, it’s worth listening. He’s not trying to sabotage Trump’s agenda—he’s trying to make sure it lives up to its promise.
At the same time, President Trump has every right to defend a bill that locks in his tax cuts, secures the border, ends the welfare racket for able-bodied freeloaders and dead people, and charts a bold course for America’s economic future. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape the federal government in a way that works for the people, not the bureaucrats—and Trump and Musk are fighting tooth and nail to make it happen. Let’s not ruin that.
Elon took it a bit too far but overall I found the whole exchange rather amusing and expect it to blow over – Trump actually got pretty restrained in hitting back. In the end, though, if Musk wants to carry out his dream of Mars, he’s going to need Trump and MAGA to do it…and as mad as he might have been, he will calm down and resume some sort of workable relationship with us. I guess there is the possibility that he goes full Left Moron on this, in which case he’ll become yet another footnote in history…joining the long list of people who crossed Trump and ended up ruined. But that is not my expectation.
I agree with what Margolis said and I think you’re right about Musk’s autism causing an outburst. Both men are alpha males to the extreme and what happened this week is completely understandable. Strong men will always clash, but they will also always let bygones be bygones too when the time comes. This relationship will heal.
From “Little Marco” to Secretary of State is an interesting trajectory for Marco Rubio…which shows that Trump doesn’t bear grudges. Also shows that Rubio is a smart guy who also doesn’t bear grudges. And that’s life at the heights…you can’t bear grudges. Not if you want to win.
They both need to learn to keep their disputes private. Just because the masses don’t think a thought is valid until it is posted doesn’t mean mature people have to do the same.
The guy who sends rockets to space and rescued two NASA astronauts and of whom also developed the most successful EV on the planet … is a clown
The guy who built much of NY skyline as well as developing some of the most exclusice and successful golf clubs on the planet and became POTUS … is a clown
But the guy who stalks conservative blogs and offers inane comments … is not a clown. LOLOLOLOLOL Democrat logic
Make it make sense
And Musk didn’t just develop “the most successful EV on the planet”—his Tesla company is also responsible for the most successful home battery storage system for solar energy, the Tesla Powerwall.
There is something else that only came out in a Musk interview—-he had no background in rocketry. He had a physics education and background, but he got interested in rockets and started reading about rocketry, and then designed the best rockets in the world. Yes, he TAUGHT HIMSELF how to build rockets, not just how to build them but how to retrieve them, by reading books.
Decades of NASA research by Ivy League scientists still could not design a rocket that is reusable, that can be retrieved from the air by what one onlooker described as “giant chopsticks” or land on a tiny target. The ability to reuse rockets will save the country multiples of billions of dollars and take years off our space exploration schedule.
Plus, he’s funny and whimsical. He picked up on the misspelling of “dog” (doge) and adopted it as an inside joke, even taking it into the government. Look up the interview where he explained why his rockets have “pointy ends”. He’s not afraid to express joy and excitement.
He is definitely breaking new ground…and I recently heard about something called “Big Gemini”…this was one of several proposals to develop the Gemini spacecraft. The earliest versions were rejected in favor of Apollo and the later in favor of the shuttle. But here’s the thing – Gemini was a very successful spacecraft. The design was very good and was capable of continual upgrades and developments. One of the Gemini proposals was to use it for circumlunar flights…that is, flying the craft around the Moon, like was done with Apollo 8 in 1968. This probably could have happened in 1967 using the upgraded Gemini (which would mate up with an Agena booster in Low Earth Orbit). They also had plans for a further upgraded Gemini which would have brought a one-man lunar lander and they likely could have accomplished this in 1968, a year before Apollo 11. And this would all be a far less cost – because we had Gemini and merely needed to improve it rather than going through the whole process of developing Apollo and the total disaster of Apollo 1. The Big Gemini was proposed in 1969 and it could hold up to 12 people – basically, it was the space shuttle but far more reusable and more cost effective…and probably could have flown by 1973 or so instead of waiting for 1981 for the only partially reusable and very expensive Space Shuttle.
The bottom line is that we could have been much further along in manned space exploration…but the bigwigs opted for the Apollo with its massive (and massively expensive) Saturn V…the Gemini’s would have, at most, required a Saturn IB launch vehicle…and very likely the Titan II would have been sufficient. Now, why? Probably because of corruption…various aerospace firms wanted a cut of the space budget. McDonnell had already got theirs with Gemini and everyone else needed some of that sweet, sweet government gravy. If we had had a Musk who was simply determined to get us to the Moon, into space permanently and on to Mars, this all probably would have been finished up by 1995 or so. Once you have what works, you keep developing that…with allowances for other people to try to come up with something genuinely superior (that is, for space, even more reusable and cheaper to get into orbit). We’ve essentially ended up wasting decades of space time because it became essentially a welfare program for the Aerospace industry.
It does make sense to someone whose entire perception of what he thinks is “politics” is really just how he FEELS about PEOPLE. Of course those feelz are directed by the pseudo-political entity that postures as political but is really just a mechanism for harvesting personality disorders and funneling them into sites like this. It’s what I call Jerry Springer Politics—lots of hostile emoting and virtual chair-throwing to vent impotent rage.
And by the way, Churchill was a famous drunk to the point Eleanor kicked him out of the WH. It’s important to know what you’re talking about.
We also need to remember that until Trump came along Churchill was the most hated and vilified political figure in modern history—yet when the nation was on the brink of destruction it took Churchill to pull it back and get it back on its feet again.
In other words, history DOES repeat itself.
Tesla back up over $300 … made some money today