Space, The Final ... er, something
A great national war is actually a temporary enthusiasm for the libertarians. Thousands of U.S. civilians have been killed, and no American can feel safe until something has been done about it. This can be presented as a deviation from the "normal" situation, although of course the war against terrorism might go on for a long time.
Commitment to a war seems to be the opposite of the libertarian program of looking after oneself alone, except that there may be no such thing as a safe haven for now. By contrast, some of the neo-conservatives may think war is always good for us, precisely because it re-dedicates us to the common good.
There is another "big picture" which gets libertarians excited, however, and does not depend on changing international circumstances: space. (See Glenn Reynolds and James Lileks). Many of the warbloggers seem to be libertarians who are also united by a long-standing interest in science fiction and in the details of space exploration.
For many of us, the Apollo program now seems to represent a golden age. What was impossible, became possible; human ingenuity, combined with a lot of hard work, seemed to be capable of almost anything, and yet there was still a sense of awe and grandeur--indeed of religion--about the whole enterprise. Somehow the hopefulness, as well as the awe, have been largely lost.
Charles Krauthammer (a neo-con and a scientist) says the shuttles and the Space Station have become a waste of time and money. Bush's proposal will be better. Lileks waxes eloquent about how it will all seem so meaningful if space flight can become routine.
What's really going on here? As I remember the Apollo program, it made a lot of people feel important. It turned Walter Cronkite into the most pompous ass in history. ("I have been hired to come into your homes because I look good and sound good. Now I am a visionary, sharing with you my observations on the future of our planet, and indeed of the universe." Oh shut up.) Whenever NASA has had to go for a big appropriation from Congress, they drop hints about finding life--formerly on the Moon, now on Mars.
Maybe it's just rock and gas? Maybe some of it can be commercially exploited? Oil fields in the Arctic are pretty spectacular. One of those New Yorker writers--Updike or Cheever--wrote once that the only real story in science fiction is how some new technology will change us, and the writers struggle to come up with something new and strange, but not so strange that it will be incomprehensible. The writer (Updike?) said a great story could be written about how the telephone actually did change us.
Part of Kennedy's idea in the 60s was to reproduce the excitement about settling the American West, and indeed the European settlement of North America. Glenn Reynolds has written that it would be good for people go through an enterprise like that (naturally, he favours more of a free enterprise approach, rather than governmental/bureaucratic). I don't think I'm being unfair if I paraphrase: people settling a harsh frontier are too busy to think about anything other than the problem at hand. This gives them focus, and their dreams, more or less unsullied by reality, can keep them going. Is this like wishing people would lose 20 or 30 points of IQ?
Reynolds also says human life will become unsustainable on earth, so we will have to leave within...say, a thousand years. Obviously at the peak of the scares about population and food supply, some thought this figure would be fifty years. We have come a long way in managing the global economy. Of course, we could be hit by an asteroid.
The left is naturally accusing Bush of promising a pipedream (and spending money that could be spent on social programs) to get re-elected. The broader question is: is space, to paraphrase Marx, the opiate of the people, once they are less attached to traditional religion? Was the settlement of the American West such a great story that we want to keep repeating it? (One science fiction story I remember from my youth is Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, warning that the natives might disappear/get wiped out by disease or killed, almost before we have any idea who they are).
From libertarians you get a sense of the private individual, caring intensely about a very few people, just as described by Tocqueville. Then: space. In Gulliver's Travels the geeks on the flying island are totally absorbed with their own bodies and feelings, then with math and astronomy. One eye is turned inward, the other out to space somewhere, or to an abstraction. This might sound like the California Buddhist who is interested in space ("I'm in a selfish phase...How can be right for anyone else, if I'm not right for myself?"), but it might be the hard-working bourgeois, caring for his family, whose hobbies and heart-felt interests go in different directions. The island people also live in constant fear of extra-global events, like the earth being hit by an asteroid, and of hobgoblins.
Wherever we go, don't we keep taking the same old problems with us? I should have added: the island people in Swift also love to discuss current events. They assume that because they have mastered math, or something, they would know how to make wise political decisions. I guess they would be bloggers today.
Update: William Langewiesche presents a more sensible view in the Atlantic: we should probably plan on being a two-planet species; this may take centuries; money can be saved, and re-directed for this project, by cancelling all of the Shuttle mission and most of the Space Station.
Jim Pinkerton says there is a good chance we will miss out on something important if we don't explore space. Great civilizations have been known to go into a decline simply because they no longer set goals for themselves.
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