Taxes and Space Flight

Today's dose of doublethink comes from Charles Krauthammer, who laments the decline of the American space program:

Is there a better symbol of willed American decline? The pity is not Discovery’s retirement — beautiful as it was, the shuttle proved too expensive and risky to operate — but that it died without a successor. The planned follow-on — the Constellation rocket-capsule program to take humans back into orbit and from there to the moon — was suddenly canceled in 2010. And with that, control of manned spaceflight was gratuitously ceded to Russia and China. . . .

China goes for the glory. Having already mastered launch and rendezvous, the Chinese plan to land on the moon by 2025. They understand well the value of symbols. And nothing could better symbolize China overtaking America than its taking our place on the moon, walking over footprints first laid down, then casually abandoned, by us.

Who cares, you say? What is national greatness, scientific prestige or inspiring the young — legacies of NASA — when we are in economic distress? Okay. But if we’re talking jobs and growth, science and technology, R&D and innovation — what President Obama insists are the keys to “an economy built to last” — why on earth cancel an incomparably sophisticated, uniquely American technological enterprise?

Sure, Charles, that would be great. But we can only afford it by either raising taxes or slashing spending somewhere else. You, as you say every week or so, are deadset opposed to any cuts in military spending, and since your party depends on the votes of people over 65, your friends will never carry through on their plans to cut health care spending. So either come out in favor of higher taxes, or shut up about space.