“… I believe that when a nation’s government has been killing people continuously for three decades, all that death and destruction is inevitably going to seep into the subconscious of individual citizens, even though it’s happening thousands of miles away and even though the government tries to keep us immune from it. Most of us can handle it but my thesis is that there are some people who are a bit off-kilter mentally who cannot handle it. I believe that the massive death and destruction ultimately triggers something within them that causes them to mirror here in the United States what the U.S. government is doing overseas. In their off-kilter minds, they are unable to do what U.S. officials do — place a high value on the sanctity of American life and no value on foreign life. For the off-kilter people, all life is equally valueless. The fact that some of these mass killers are military veterans and may even have participated in the oversea death, destruction, and mayhem makes the psychological situation even more problematic.
There is an easy way to test my thesis: bring the forever wars to an immediate end and bring all U.S. soldiers home immediately. Even if my thesis isn’t correct, it’s the morally right thing to do anyway.”
By Alyssa Lukpat, Globe CorrespondentWhen Buzz Aldrin embarked 50 years ago on his historic voyage to the moon aboard Apollo 11, he packed a tiny, credit-card-sized book, “The Autobiography of Robert Hutchings Goddard, Father of the Space Age.’’Goddard, who was a physics professor at Worcester’s Clark University, launched the first liquid-fueled rocket in Auburn in 1926 and is generally considered the father of modern rocketry.For Aldrin, who was the second man to set foot on the moon, there was also a personal connection.Goddard had taught Edwin Aldrin Sr., Buzz’s father. Buzz never met Goddard but cherished his father’s connection with the professor, said Fordyce Williams, a coordinator of archives and special collections at Clark, where the book is on display.The book was published after Goddard’s death, “but I think he would be happy it was published and the fact that it went to the moon would be absolutely incredible for him,’’ Williams said this week as the 50th anniversary of the moon landing approached on Saturday.Goddard’s autobiography includes a story called the “cherry tree vision.’’ When he was 17, in 1899, he was trimming dead branches off a cherry tree and looked over the fields surrounding him, Williams said.“[A]s I looked towards the fields at the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars. . . . I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended for existence at last seemed very purposive,’’ Goddard wrote.In his diary, he wrote that he envisioned the device had “a weight whirling around a horizontal shaft, moving more rapidly above than below’’ — and that “could furnish lift by virtue of the greater centrifugal force at the top of the path.’’Goddard called the day of the cherry tree, Oct. 19, 1899, “anniversary day,’’ and noted it in his diary every year, Williams said. When the cherry tree fell in a hurricane in 1938, he wrote, “Cherry tree down. Have to continue alone.’’Goddard wrote his autobiography shortly after he launched his first rocket, Williams said. He died in 1945 without seeing it published — and without seeing the 1960s space program that would land men on the moon using giant rockets that were descended from those he had pioneered.He also did not live to receive $1 million from the US government, which paid Esther Goddard, his wife, and the Guggenheim Foundation, which funded some of his research, for infringing on Goddard’s rocket patents.The book was published in 1966 by Achille St. Onge, a miniature books publisher in Worcester. St. Onge published 1,926 copies of the book in honor of the year of Goddard’s first launch. The 85-page book, bound in dark blue leather, is about 3 inches tall and 2 inches wide.“The publishing of the book probably would’ve been St. Onge’s idea. He would’ve needed to have gotten the autobiographical materials from Esther, so she obviously gave her OK and gave the materials to publish the book,’’ Williams said.Aldrin brought the book to the moon at the request of St. Onge.“St. Onge sent the book to Buzz Aldrin in June before his flight and said, ‘Take this book with you and leave it on the moon in honor of Goddard,’’’ Williams said.“He was not able to leave it on the moon, but he wrote a letter back to St. Onge in September and said: ‘Thank you for the book. I did take it with me, but I wasn’t allowed to leave it there.’ But he brought it back and said he’d give it to either Esther or Clark.’’Aldrin decided to give the book to Goddard’s widow, who eventually donated it to Clark.Aldrin autographed the book and wrote, “Flown to the moon on board Apollo 11.’’ Visitors can see the book at the university’s Robert H. Goddard Library, along with other items donated by Esther Goddard, including correspondence from Robert Goddard, patents, and photographs.Jeremiah Manion of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Alyssa Lukpat can be reached at alyssa.lukpat@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @AlyssaLukpat.
At first, enforcement is weak, which means that people circumvent it. That then induces the government to adopt an ever-increasing array of harsh, brutal, ruthless, and tyrannical measures. Yet, owing to the great disparities of economic opportunity between the United States and their countries of origin, immigrants are willing to risk getting caught or even losing their lives. They keep coming, which causes federal officials to crack down even more brutally, ruthlessly, and tyrannically.
That’s why that father and daughter drowned in the Rio Grande recently. The video of their dead bodies on shore was widely published by the mainstream media. The victims were circumventing the tremendous immigration enforcement crackdown along the border. The same holds true for the people who are dying of thirst trying to enter the United States via deserts in the Southwest. The same for those people who die in the backs of 18-wheelers. They are all trying to evade the increasingly harsh enforcement measures designed to keep them out of the United States.
Those who support big government think that government policy can be improved by collecting data. This is just another fatal conceit. The census should only collect data necessary to allocate congressional seats.
All the data collection done for the purpose of generating aggregate statistics by the
