Reflections on the Tsarnaev manhunt, one week after

On April 18, Americans residing around the city of Boston were alerted by their neighbors that an imminent threat to their safety was in their midst. Throughout the night, they were warned about the danger to their property and their families.

As April 19 dawned, those Bostonians who were willing, along with many others from surrounding communities, armed themselves and took to the streets and fields in defense of their homes, communities, and fellow citizens...

...wait, WHAT?

Apollo+40: "Hope for all...we can do anything."

For century upon century, to explore the Moon was considered the dream of the addle-brained or the foolhardy. Only divine beings or supermen could withstand the rigors and distance of such a journey. But then, early in the twentieth century, mortal humans went aloft on mechanical wings, defying gravity and redefining the realm of possibility. For ever after, the Moon became a goal within the grasp of those on Earth: for if man could build a machine to make him fly, he would eventually build one to take him to the Moon. When and how and who was only a matter of time. 

From December of 1968 to December of 1972, twenty-four representatives of the human race voyaged to the Moon, and half as many walked upon its surface. In all, nine voyages across the quarter-million mile distance from Earthly safety to Lunar emptiness, each one of them dangerous and expensive. The requirements to make the voyage a reality were the qualities that make humankind unique: our desire to achieve, our wear-with-all and perseverance, our willingness to sacrifice time, energy, and even life in the long labor needed to solve the problems one by one over the course of the endeavor. Most important of all was humankind's tendency to imagine things that are not possible. Imagining that it could be done was the very first step taken in the journey from the Earth to the Moon. 

-- opening narration by Blythe Danner, Episode 12: "Le Voyage Dans La Lune", From the Earth to the Moon (1998)

At 2:24:59PM, Eastern Standard Time, December 19, 1972, Apollo 17 splashed down in the south Pacific Ocean. Less than an hour later, astronauts Gene Cernan, Ron Evans, and Jack Schmitt were safe aboard their recovery ship, the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga (CV-14). Their flight - man's final flight to the Moon - had lasted 12 days, 13 hours, 51 minutes, and 59 seconds.

Apollo 17 Commmand Module America with the USS Ticonderoga in the background

Ticonderoga was an appropriate ship for the voyage to end aboard. Six years and eight months before, Ron Evans was flying combat missions over Vietnam from her deck when he found out he had been picked to be an astronaut.

The Apollo Program was over.

Now forty years on, where do we stand as a nation of greatness, and when can we expect the human race to exceed its high point of achievement?

TFH 4/20: Where We've Been, and Where We Need to Go Back

Today's edition of Their Finest Hour is going to take a slightly different tack from the regular daily features. It is certainly a reminder of American greatness and historical accomplishment and should also serve as a message that speaks to how we've let our greatness slip away. It also serves to me as a reminder of work left undone, and that's something I'm disappointed in myself for.

Forty years ago tonight, at 21:23:35 Eastern Time, Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charlie Duke landed on the Moon at the Descartes Highlands in LM-11. Ken Mattingly orbited overhead in CSM-13. Young and Duke became just the ninth and tenth men to walk on the Moon, spending over 20 hours exploring the lunar surface across three EVAs during a stay on the Moon of nearly three days.

Three and a half years ago, I started - and then let slip - a series here for "Apollo+40", a celebration of the United States' travels to our Moon forty years later. Sadly, as was true for our Nation forty years ago, after the triumph of Apollo 11 and the first lunar landing my attention waned.

Yesterday, NASA handed over one of the three surviving space shuttles - Discovery (OV-103) - to the Smithsonian Institution. Presently, the United States does not possess a manned spaceflight capability. In my view, this is inexcusable. The decline in our space program is merely a symptom. I fear with all my being that the United States isn't just losing its greatness: we may be losing our ability to get it back.

On Reclaiming the Narrative - the Importance of Language

Thus we may know that there are five essentials to victory:

• He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.
• He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces.
• He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.
• He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared.
• He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.

Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy or yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

-- Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Section III: Attack by Strategem

I'm going to be writing a series on "Reclaiming the Narrative"; how we as conservatives, libertarians, and patriots can not just take back but dominate the social and political discourse. Recent events, and how they've been carried forth in the media, reinforce that conservo-libertarian views will not be accurately portrayed by the opposition and the narrative of the body politic will be entirely governed by the views of the liberal-statist totalitarian who seeks to squelch speech, not promote it.

I'm starting this series with the quote from Sun Tzu because it states very well what we must be prepared for to combat our opposition daily. To get our principles of individual sovereignty and liberty, limited Constitutional government, and fiscal sanity in the hearts and minds of more of our friends and neighbors, we must not retreat from any debate. We must not continue to allow the opposition to define the arguments. We must not accept their premises. We have to have command of the issues and our own narrative, and that begins with the importance of language, our use of it, and deconstructing how the opposition bastardizes it.

On September 10th

"Where were you when...?" It's a common question asked about traumatic events whether one was present personally for the trauma or not. Hearing about them or watching them through mass media is enough. Tomorrow there will be many conversations like that all across America, and for that matter, the world.

For me, the "where was I?" starts with the day before. I remember pretty much my whole day of Monday, September 10, 2001. I had woken up and left early to drive to Cleveland for a sales meeting with a customer. It was a beautiful late summer/early fall day, just as the next day would turn out to be.