Let’s face it folks, we’re on kind of a losing streak. I have elsewhere fixed American’s declining MoJo to 9-11, and I stand by that construction. We’ve had a pretty dim 21st Century, what with Afghanistan/Iraq/Financial Crisis/Obama/Trump/COVID/Economic Crisis/European War etc, but the plain, nagging suspicion is that our system—and by that I mean the WHOLE enchilada—is broken. We don’t like each other. We don’t do hard things well. We don’t hold people accountable. We don’t seem to possess a common sense of national value and virtue, preferring instead to identify with our “team”, whatever that may be. And for some of us, our “team” seems to have lost its mind. As you may discern, I am concerned about this. Not obsessed, not necessarily downtrodden, but concerned.
Fear not though, because I have seen some things lately that provide me hope for the future, and on the last Monday in July I share them now with you.
We Can Still Do Space
I don’t track NASA all that closely these days. Fifty three years ago this week, I was a four-year old boy rambunctiously perambulating through my house when I was “shushed” by my Father watching something on television. I asked what he was watching, and he told me that we had put men on the moon. I sat down and watched with him, creating what is for me my earliest well-defined memory. NASA has been running in the background of my entire life, and every so often, the space agency pokes its head up and says, “don’t forget about us. We do something very special, something no one else in the world can do.” Their latest version of this claim is the James Webb Space Telescope, which recently began sending unbelievably beautiful images of the universe we inhabit. I have been transfixed by the pictures I’ve seen, pictures that made me sit back and say, “ok…we still got this.” I commend to you the work of my friend David Larter who has written a wonderful three part series on the history of the program for his employer (and prime contractor) Northrop Grumman.
Congress Doing Its Job
I, and most traditional conservatives, would like to see the lion’s share of the business of political change and management at the national level happen as a result of Congressional activity. The regulatory state existing within the bloated leviathan of the Executive Branch, the baseless and unconstitutional overreach of the Supreme Court across the most of the last half of the 20th Century, and the rise of the 24 hour news cycle enabled by social media—have all conspired to render our Article I branch lazy, cowardly, and ineffective. But—there is hope.
First, there is an effort within the Senate to amend the Electoral Count Act of 1887. The invaluable Yuval Levin of National Review and AEI provides a summary of what one of the efforts in this regard will accomplish:
This bill clarifies that states must appoint presidential electors in accordance with the laws they each pass before election day and does away with the dangerously vague concept of a “failed election” in the original ECA. It requires that the governor of each state (or else another particular official specifically assigned this role by state law) be the person to certify the state’s slate of electors, to avoid the possibility of different officials sending different slates to Congress. It clarifies that the vice president’s role in counting electoral votes in Congress is purely ministerial and does not involve any sole decision-making authority. It raises the threshold for raising objections to a state’s electoral votes in Congress from one member of each house to one-fifth of the members of each house and narrows and clarifies the grounds for filing objections. And it allows for expedited federal judicial review of any challenges raised by a presidential candidate under already existing federal law to a state’s certification of its elections, but does not create any new right of action in federal court regarding state officials’ enforcement of state laws.
I’m onboard with this.
Secondly, there is a movement in the House to codify same-sex marriage in federal legislation, offering it protection it does not currently enjoy as a result of the right having been created judicially, not legislatively in the Supreme Court’s Obergefell Case. Additionally, the House passed a measure that extends the same federal, legislative protection to contraception, but with considerably lower GOP support (8 votes, as opposed to 47 in the same sex marriage legislation).
So here’s the deal. The Supreme Court rightly ruled that Roe and Casey were wrongly decided, and that since the Constitution was silent on abortion AND that there was historic evidence that abortion was NOT broadly supported before the rulings were adopted, that there was no constitutionally protected right to abortion. I agree completely with this decision. It did not outlaw abortion, it rightly stated that to the extent that abortion could and can be provided, it would be through the legislative process. Most observers believe that this DEFINITELY means State legislatures but potentially NOT the federal legislature. This is because the Congress is delegated enumerated powers from Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution, and it is not clear that Congress could legally decree national abortion law.
In his concurrence to the Dobbs decision, Justice Clarence Thomas RIGHTLY suggested that the legal reasoning that went into the court’s decisions on gay marriage and contraception are not terribly different than the court’s reasoning in Dobbs/abortion. Where he made news was in seemingly advocating for cases challenging the right to gay marriage and or contraception so that the court might revisit THOSE decisions.
Putting aside the fact that both the gay marriage decision and the contraception decision were fairly popular instantly and have become more accepted as time has gong on (while abortion was controversial from the start and remained that way), Thomas has a point. I’m not sure the Court had the constitutional right to rule that state laws against gay marriage and contraception were unconstitutional. My doubts are nowhere NEAR as serious as my doubts about Roe/Casey, but I definitely think Thomas is on to something.
The question then, is does the federal legislature have the right to legislate gay marriage and contraception? This is a tougher question, but if I squint really hard, I can see both of the bills the House passed last week as being Constitutional. I certainly believe that when the federal legislature rules on abidingly political questions, the outcomes are far better than when the courts try and settle political questions.
Finally, there are the January 6th hearings. I was prepared for them to be a nothing-burger, as the free press had done such a good job of uncovering a good deal of the story. I was wrong. These hearings have been an incredibly useful means for truly capturing the perfidy of the last President, and for getting on record witness after witness from WITHIN HIS ADMINISTRATION who attest to his utter unfitness.
Ukraine
Let’s face it, the Biden Administration is not doing a whole lot of things very well, but I find it very hard to find fault with them on how they are handling the war in Ukraine and the responsibilities of free-world leadership to contest the Russian invasion. They are deftly handing both the military and the diplomatic aspects, while pouring—and I mean pouring—aid into Ukraine. That aid is not enough for some, but the degree to which they are stepping up to our world leadership responsibilities is gratifying.
Bottom line—we are, on some fronts at least—sucking less than we were a year ago.
Ummmm..... No.
Space: The JWST is a marvel, and it ought to be for how much it cost and how long it took. But NASA isn't shining with glory for the delays and cost of the Space Launch System or Artemis, neither of which has flown after MANY years of delays and many billions of dollars of overbudget dollars. For example, the James Webb Space Telescope was launched using an Ariane 5 rocket; NASA didn't do that.
If you want to talk about doing space RIGHT, then you need to look at SpaceX and Elon Musk. A launch a week so far this year, without a failure. And the most impressive thing I've seen in decades has been the simultaneous side-by-side landings of the Falcon Heavy's two side boosters. Or perhaps it has been over 100 successful landings of Falcon 9 first-stage boosters on their drone ships. Remind me; how much of the SLS will be recovered for re-use? I believe that the number is 0.0%. Assuming that it ever flies at all. Jerry Pournelle said many times that NASA was no longer a "space" program, but a retirement program for engineers. I'm not sure we need NASA any longer.
Congress? Congress hasn't passed a single appropriations bill or budget in a DECADE. It's all omnibus spending bills and continuing resolutions, and they've spent TRILLIONS of dollars of made-up inflationary money. A gerontocracy of thieves; Nancy Pelosi has made MILLIONS of dollars on insider trading and graft. Abortion or contraception or gay marriage? They had MANY years of absolute Dimocrat control and never passed a single bill on ANY of those topics. I know, they THOUGHT that no future Supreme Court might reconsider any of those topics, so never prepared for the eventuality. But even now, they're trying to re-build the court system so they don't have to actually pass laws.
All of which would be unconstitutional because, as you note, the Constitution gives them 18 enumerated powers, and 95% of Federal law isn't constitutional.
I take it from your reverence for National Review that you count yourself among the NeverTrumpers. You've lost me, because Trump was a marvelous President who was cheated out of his second term by MASSIVE fraud. And the J6 fiasco has been nothing less than a Stalinist Show Trial, a kangaroo court run by traitors, clowns and thieves. There's damned little "evidence", and a lot of that is fraud and hearsay - and no exculpatory evidence is allowed - or even acknowledged.
And the current "president" is a crooked senile grifter, who never accomplished ANYTHING in his 5 decades in Washington. He's a long-time liar and plagiarist, never takes responsibility for his failures, and can't even stick to the same litany of lies. His son, the smartest person Joe knows, is a traitorous crackhead pervert who is even a bigger grifter than the "Big Guy" himself.
Finally, Ukraine; I was initially supportive of Ukrainian efforts, but it seems that the level of graft and thievery there is truly Bidenesque in its brazenness. Ukraine is in Europe, and it needs a European solution - without an additional $200 BILLION in printing-press money. Especially since Biden abandoned an army's worth of money and weapons in his disastrous pullout of Afghanistan.
Hope for the future? There is NO hope for the future of America - not without putting Biden and son and Pelosi in prison and reforming the way American "justice" is administered. Perhaps we should even re-read the Constitution, and apply some of that "federalism" stuff we all learned in high school civics classes. Let the STATES do things, for a change. Certainly, what we've been doing for the last 25 years hasn't been working.
Hope springs eternal. It’s not the what it is the how.