Posts from chester7777 in thread „Do You Believe They Put A Man On The Moon?“

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Originally posted by Stumpy@Jul 17 2005, 06:48 PM
I think what Chester and I are referring to is defense is the only legitimate function of the national government, PV. Over the 216 years the U.S. has existed, Washington D.C. has usurped almost all governmental powers in the United States, which is in direct violation of our Constitution. The U.S. Constitution grants very limited powers to the federal government but activist judges and politicians have, in effect, ignored the constitutional restrictions placed on the federal government and passed various laws taking away state powers and placing them at the federal level. This infuriates most conservatives like me because I'm a firm believer in the federalism (which is a system whereby the state governments and central government share power and responsibilities) laid out in our Constitution.

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Stumpy has stated it very well.

The functions you mentioned, Popol Vuh, are best left to local and state governments. Things like police, fire, and education should be handled strictly at a local level.

Infrastructure like roads could be considered part of a defense system and in a limited amount anyway, could be handled by the states, with federal assistance.

John Wayne's perspective, as far as I understand it regarding limited government (along with others, like Ronald Reagan) is very similar. I suspect many John Wayne fans think along those same lines, of limited government and corresponding lower taxes. It's obvious this perspective is currently losing ground in this country, but there are still a few of us die-hards left .

Chester

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Originally posted by Stumpy@Jul 16 2005, 02:36 PM
I'm a hardrock fiscal conservative and just hate to see the government spend money on what I think are foolish ventures. Those would include practically everything except national defense.

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Stumpy,

I, too, consider myself a hardrock fiscal conservative, but in working in and around the military/industrial complex located here in the Sunnyvale/Mountain View/Santa Clara area in California, I have seen many military weapon systems that I'm sure were designed and built from NASA experimentation. While I hate to see us waste $$$ also, many of these missile systems or what have you, that we depend on for our defense, can only be built with someone out in front, such as NASA, experimenting with these different techniques. Certainly, satellite technology has been a boon to our defense (and to our economy), and wouldn't be there without the space program. The knowledge and intelligence of the space program and the military co-mingle to bring about many of the good things we have today (including the Internet, which allows us to carry on this conversation right now ). I don't know if the human race will eventually outgrow the Earth, but if we do, discovering alternatives might be possible if we know how things respond in zero gravity, etc. which we learn through our space program.

All that being said, I am not a rabid supporter, but can see the potential benefits.

I feel that defense is the only legitimate function of the government, and if we want to start cutting away the waste, there are certainly many other programs that are sucking us dry .

Chester

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Originally posted by Stumpy@Jul 14 2005, 05:59 PM
My personal feeling about the entire space program is that it's one of the biggest wastes of money the clowns in Washington have ever made. And they waste money like it's going out of style.

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Now, Stumpy, they weren't really wasting money, because I'm sure there were a lot of wealthy business people who benefitted from the manufacture of all the equipment used to get us to the moon. B)

Chester