Well, I disagree with some your characterizations, but as you said, we’ve all gone back and forth on this before. I’m actually not a “cut defense” liberal — but I would certainly never cut DARPA, ONR, AFOSR, or the ARO, the basic (and more applied in some of their cases) research agencies at DOD. They provide the lifeblood of our technological advantage — as, in my opinion, do NSF, NIH, DOE Office of Science, etc. Anyway, as I wrote in my original, I agree that smart and inventive people are needed to bring these things to commercial life (with incredible hard work). But — you say I overemphasize government funding for the underpinnings, I say you underemphasize them.

Move_zig:

You are missing my point. I am not saying that I think the what the Founders said is no longer applicable. I would just like to hear a reasoned discussion of where the line is. My point is that privacy does not have to become “passe” when people no longer respect their own privacy. People willingly post details of their private lives for public consumption. Facebook profiles, youtube videos, published GPS coordinates the list only gets longer. What right of self defense exists unless there is also a right to self destruction?

The basis which I believe in inseperable from they genius of the Founders is the religious moral foundation which they built their vision on. They were learned and wise but they were also human and they realized that each generation had the right and responsibility to renegotiate the social contract. This country started out with slavery and without women’s sufferage but we found a way to evolve our social contract to include those it originally left out because it was right.

I don’t think that freedom is outdated. I think that freedom is a gift that we throw away very lightly. I want to know why people in other countries and times have sacrificed their freedom to tyrants. Are we doing that now? I know that I don’t want to live in North Korea now. The question I have is will I want to live in the United States in 10-20 years.

Rob:

Not nearly as often as the proponents of big government would like to think.

You’re basing this on what data?

My grandmother, who unfortunately passed away in the last year, used to tell me about helping her father farm with horses the land he homesteaded here in North Dakota after immigrating from Norway. She said that in those days the North Dakota landscape was dotted with little towns, because everyone traveled by horse and carriage. Or walked. And going even 10 miles into town for supplies good be a day trip.

My youthful experiences are not too different from your grandmothers except we had cars for transportation and tractors for plowing, etc. Horses were still used for some farming functions and a day trip was 30-60 miles instead of 10.

Having lived through all the changes, not all of them good, gives one a different prespective.

And where are the flying cars they promised us?

Yes, I love technology and immerse myself in it.

On the other hand, I am very disappointed by the lack of visible future progress I had anticipated. Indeed, I share many of the same misgivings that Daniel Wilson complains of in his book: Where’s my Jetpack?

In Where’s My Jetpack?, roboticist Daniel H. Wilson takes a hilarious look at the future we always imagined for ourselves. He exposes technology, spotlights existing prototypes, and reveals drawing-board plans. You will learn which technologies are already available, who made them, and where to find them. If the technology is not public, you will learn how to build, buy, or steal it.

But worse than just lack of George Jetson speeders, BladerRunner Spinners, the Jupiter II’s antigravity drives, Tesla’s wireless energy, and Scotty’s Matter-Anti-matter starship engines, I see both loss and great danger.

Loss, in that you see the coarsening of society. The dumbing-down of the kids, indeed, the dumbing down of just about everyone. Back in the day when that photo above was made (FORBIDDEN PLANET with Leslie Nielson, Walter Pigeon, Anne Francis and introducing Robbie the Robot) being a scientist was COOL!

Scientists routinely saved the Earth from huge mutated ants (THEM!) and other monsters from Gamera to Godzirra (bad lip-synching and all) and even when they couldn’t come through and save the day (WAR OF THE WORLDS – 1953) they were still manly, got the girls, and were COOL. Whether they were the Professor on GILLIGAN’S ISLAND or JOHNNY QUEST’S dad, these guys were men and cool.

No longer.

Now, scientists are crazy (BACK TO THE FUTURE) or even dangerous (THE FLY – with Jeff Goldblum) and by and large, wimpy, flaccid Nerds. They are the Geeks for BESTBUY’S Geek Squad, or the twerps representing other cellphone companies on the ALLTEL ads.

Why would any kid want to be an engineer or scientist?

Why would any kid be interested in building his own crystal radio? Or in advanced math? Or look up at the stars and wonder what it would be like to shoot for them (OCTOBER SKY was based on the true-life story of the first steps into science by a kid living in West Virginia coal country, later a NASA scientist)

As a result, we are suffering a self-induced brain-drain. Our advanced math and science courses would die out were it not for foreign national grad students, who often times come here, learn what we teach and then go back home. That is how Silkworm Missiles, which plagued oil tanker traffic in the Gulf or Hormuz, came from.

And there is danger.

Knowledge must be tempered by wisdom. Everyone (you would think) knows that giving an infant a live grenade to play with is asking for trouble. But as technology advances, the weapons of warfare become far more lethal by leaps and bounds. In particular, the nuclear, biological and chemical weapons are in the hands of dangerous Third World countries, who do not have the inner-guidance of restraint that even the Soviets had. The aging Soviet generals who faced us during the Cold War knew first-hand the devastation of war and knew when to back down and when to stay their hand.

There will be no cooler heads to prevail in the confrontations just off our horizon. And joining this greater capability of destruction and greater willingness to use these weapons are new weapons: nanotechnology, directed energy and, if they have not already been tested, geophysical warfare (artificially-induced earthquakes, droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis and the like)

As if that isn’t bad enough, government surveillance and control technologies, matched with a general disinterest and ignorance in the history and methodology of tyrannies make future global dictatorships a distinct possibility.

Buy ammo.

You can keep the robot. I’ll take the space babe.

Your future

Michael,

Discuss it yourself and think it through.

Does privacy ever become passe?

Is Freedom ever outdated?

Does the Right to Self Defense ever become an anachronism?

The Founders were students of history. The knew the Bible, not just the Garden of Eden, but of Roman occupation of the Holy land and the numerous despots, tyrants and wars that have been described in the Bible.

They studied the wars and city-states of Greece and their struggles internally and against outside powers.

They studied the history of Rome, from its myth of creation under Romulus and Remus, to its eventual collapse.

They were very familiar with the lies and methodologies of tyrants from the time of the Bible, Ancient Greece, Rome and all the way up to the tyrant King George III.

They knew the instrumentalities of Control and the Earmarks of Freedom. It was based upon those very bases that they drew up a government with limited and enumerated powers and conferred onto the People the Right and Duty to control their own government.

History is a great instructor as to what works and what does not. The Left have a huge collective blind spot as to histories’ lessons, and it is because of this blind spot that they condemn everyone they have power over to the same bloody oppression, mass murder and misery that has happened with each Statist regime that has existed since 1917.

Think it through and you will find that Freedom is never outdated.

If you still think so, you are free to move to North Korea and try it on for size.

building upon the discoveries of basic research scientists funded by the federal government.

Not nearly as often as the proponents of big government would like to think. And let’s not forget that turning a workable technological concept into a wonder phone, or an awesome computer, takes a lot more than any work any government scientist has ever done.

Plus, most of the R&D break-throughs government has been responsible for has been done by the military. Which is the one part of government liberals routinely want to cut.

So, yeah. Liberals love throwing that “but government funded the research!” response around to posts like this, but that’s misleading. Private industry does most of the heavy lifting, and government’s involvement is from the liberal left’s most hated part of government.

You’re basing this on what data?

Observations, though I’m certainly not interested in a debate over someone whose livelihood is likely research funded by government grants. Kind of like debating Catholicism with the Pope.