On this day, fifty years ago, humans first set foot on the lunar surface. While it would be simple to chalk the Apollo project up to being an act of the Cold War, it was something much more than that. The Apollo 11 landing was the result of a challenge that summoned Americans to look beyond themselves, to do the impossible and to do so in the name of all Mankind. Putting Americans on the moon tested both our courage and our understanding of the true meaning of wealth. And on both counts, we, as a nation, succeeded.
Indeed, it was an achievement of a political philosophy, contemporary liberalism.
“Answerable courage.”
In his 1946 essay, “The Future of American Liberalism,” the great liberal figure Morris R. Cohen observed, “Liberalism, on the other hand, regards life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situations, in which there is no guarantee that the new will always be the good or the true, in which progress is a precarious achievement rather than inevitability.”
It is all too easy to celebrate what happened fifty years ago today as simply a scientific achievement. But it was also an achievement of imagination fueled by liberalism. When President John F. Kennedy went before Congress in May 1961 and challenged his fellow countrymen to do the impossible; that is, to send a man to the moon and return him safely to earth, he was indeed acting in the spirit of Morris Cohen’s conviction.
That conviction was amplified a year later in Kennedy's famous Rice University speech where he put poetry to the challenge explaining why humanity, with American astronauts as their missionaries, would reach the moon before 1970. He explained that the desire to explore was something innate to man, and beyond that, the task would a test of national will.
The young president was candid about the risky nature of the project. But, as if to answer potential critics he recalled our shared heritage of determination when reminded us, “William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.”
“Answerable courage.” It was present in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address when he implored the nation still embroiled in The Civil War “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.” It was also present in FDR’s First Inaugural Address when he reminded a nation mired in a Great Depression “that the only thing to fear is fear itself.”
And it was present in JFK’s Rice University speech when he uttered that now famous declaration, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
FDR once noted, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” Listening to the speech we hear Roosevelt’s and Cohen’s maxims in Kennedy’s tone as well as words. Within that challenge of choosing to go to the Moon the President’s voice echoes with a full of understanding the dangers that were inherent in making this perilous journey. But that same listener can practically hear Kennedy overcoming his own fears of failure and disaster with a sense of not just national purpose but a greater purpose of humanity. Answerable courage.
A Better Understanding of Wealth
On a deeper level, the Apollo program illustrated how in those heady days of the middle 20th century, the most Americans saw money different than many of us do today. We drew upon what economist John Maynard Keynes wrote about in his 1930 essay, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. In it Keynes foresaw a society where humanity would be freed from the economic problem of earning money for mere survival. In its place, there would be a general prosperity that would allow society to fund the arts and sciences. It would lead to greater discovery and a better standard of life for all.
The Apollo program Kennedy foresaw was the logical extension of Keynes’s hope for the future. By 1962, the United States had become a generally wealthy society with much national treasure able to be expended upon the exploration of space. Money was seen as a means to further humanity.
Nowadays, money is too often seen as an end in and of itself. But back then, in the early Sixties, we understood that money was an ends to a mean – leading a right, reasonable life; a vehicle for providing a richer society in ways beyond the mere possession of money. We understood that wealth creation was not meant to enslave us but instead to free us to explore other worlds as well as do other great things. Now we have blinded ourselves to see money as the goal and nothing else.
In essence, this lost understanding of wealth is part and parcel of the definition of contemporary American liberalism, a philosophy that had last reached its last apex in the middle 20th century. And when we saw money as a means to an end instead of the end in and of itself, we did great things, magnificent things. Going to the showed us that anything was possible. A nation can marshal it resources to solve even the most complex problems.
Ayn Rand said of Apollo 11’s success, "Think of what was required to achieve that mission: think of the unpitying effort; the merciless discipline; the courage; the responsibility of relying on one’s judgment; the days, nights and years of unswerving dedication to a goal; the tension of the unbroken maintenance of a full, clear mental focus; and the honesty. It took the highest, sustained acts of virtue to create in reality what had only been dreamt of for millennia."
Rand, in her usual libertarian mindset, was shortsighted in her assessment. What she did not understand was the moon landing was a project not nearly carried through by a few courageous individual astronauts but instead as an American community as a whole. The Apollo Program cost roughly $25.4 billion -- almost $170 billion in today’s money; with American taxpayers footing the bill. Chris Kraft, the Director of Flight Operations for the Apollo once remarked that success of the program dozens of lives. Think of the sacrifices of astronauts in training such as Elliot See and Charlie Basset and the crew of Apollo 1 launch pad fire, Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. And that doesn't even address the hundreds of others who suffered and died in pursuit of this noble achievement. We chose to go to the moon. The challenge was accepted and the goal was achieved.
Now the present administration talks of returning to the moon and going to Mars. But in doing so, this objective does little to inspire Americans to take up this challenge. Perhaps it is because it has been done before and that there are problems on Earth that need to be addressed. But I think that it is more than that.
Missing in the current president’s space travel talk is any mention of those liberal attributes that Kennedy spoke of – courage to do the seemingly impossible; the willingness to use our wealth to further the common good or to take the lead among nations for the betterment of humanity. Space travel is now only thought about as another transaction for tourism and private gain. We do not hear any call to national purpose nor any challenge to sacrifice for the good of the United States making a better world for all mankind. In short, there is no sense of greater purpose than personal gain, none of Kennedy’s liberal attributes to this President’s stated desire to return to planetary exploration.
But beyond that, Kennedy’s interpretation of Morris Cohen’s view of liberalism in reaching the moon was a metaphor to do the magnificent and difficult. It exemplified a national will to “do the other things” which included ending poverty, curing disease and making the world safe for democracy. We need this very will to further the common good in the present day. The same will that it took to take us to the moon is now needed to save us from global warming, reforming capitalism to make it again fairer while more democratic and perhaps to even save democracy itself from those who believe it to be a spent force. Liberal courage and the liberal view of wealth as a means to an end is so sorely needed now more than ever.
Yes, it is true that Americans of all political beliefs engaged in the Apollo project (Neil Armstrong himself was something of a isolationist; Buzz Aldrin is notoriously conservative). But that does not take away from the fact that the entire vision of the moon landing was born of liberal principles. The science involved, the desire to finance the project as a community seeking the common good and the willingness to pay the price to succeed, these are all liberal notions.
And chief among those was answerable courage — a liberal notion, indeed.