Once, when we were free, we were the greatest nation on earth; now, we are a small nation with a big government. If he has the courage and vision, Trump can reverse that.
Now is a good time to think about this because last week marked the 55th anniversary of man landing on the moon. Impelled by the words of a murdered president, Americans achieved what was easily the most technologically complex operation man ever undertook. A mere 66 years after the Wright Brother’s first flight, Americans had not only sent men to walk on and plant their flag on the Moon but, even more impressively, had returned them to earth safely.
Possibly the craziest thing about that moon landing was that it was done with the computational equivalent of a Model T. For perspective, the phone you’re reading this on or have nearby has over 100,000 times the processing power of the machines that powered Apollo, along with literally millions of times more memory. With today’s kind of power, it sort of makes you wonder why haven’t we cured cancer or invented time travel or teleportation.
The last time an American walked on the moon (no other country has achieved this) was 1972, fully 52 years ago. In the subsequent half century, the world has changed a great deal. From cable TV to the Internet to mobile phones to video games to discount investing to rideshare apps to recycled plastic to drive-thru restaurants and microwaves and MRI machines, the world has changed in extraordinary ways.
Image by Vince Coyner.
But not all change is for the better. The moon landing was perhaps the high point of American civilizational achievement. The America of the first two-thirds of the 20th century was a robust nation that could do almost anything. Americans won two world wars and, between them, built the Empire State Building in 13 months and the nuclear bomb in 4 years.
Perhaps most tellingly was the fact that, at mid-century, Detroit was not only the richest city in the United States, it was the richest city in the entire world. America was a can-do, swashbuckling nation of Supermen who could accomplish anything.
Compare that to what I once called An American Monument to Osama Bin Laden. It took twelve years from 9/11 before One World Trade replaced the Twin Towers. Even when the United States was more unified than at any point in more than half a century, the powers that be couldn’t figure out how to rebuild the site. I wrote,
We have become incapable of doing anything in this country without giving every single person or group a say in how things proceed, regardless of how tenuous or tangential the nature of their connection to the project in the first place. There seems to be lacking a basic understanding that difficult decisions almost always leave some people feeling bruised or that lawsuits are not necessarily the most effective instruments through which to channel public policy.
The One World Trade building is exactly three miles from the Empire State Building on a map but a million miles away in psyche. Instead of “can do,” we’ve become “can’t possibly do.”
America is now a caricature of a nation. We’re not allowed to agree on what a woman is. We’re told that fossil fuels, possibly the closest thing in history to a gift from God, are an existential threat. We’re told that the Founding Fathers who created the nation that generated the greatest prosperity in all human history were evil while a drug-addled career criminal thug like George Floyd is a hero. From education to healthcare to protecting ex-presidents, the nation has become an unworkable mess…that literally doesn’t work.
Enter Elon Musk. The billionaire genius says that he wants to colonize Mars to make our species interplanetary and, ideally, give us the ability to survive some life-ending calamity here on Earth. He laments that it’s been over a half-century since we landed on another world. But he’s confident that it can be done and that SpaceX can do it. While I have no doubt he’s right on both counts, I have grave doubts that it will actually happen.
Why? Two reasons. The first is “Income Security.”
Today, 70% of the federal government spending is on things that involve income distribution. Whether Social Security, healthcare, food stamps, Headstart, or myriad other programs, fully 70% of the government’s spending is on things the Founding Fathers never envisioned. Begun during the Depression, spending on social programs took off in the 1960s. Today, it drives virtually all budget considerations.
The second is regulation. Since 1969, federal regulation in the United States has quadrupled (literally four times as many pages of regulations). The Federal Register is almost 200,000 pages long, and regulation costs Americans an estimated $13,000 per person annually! Stunningly, that’s almost 20% of the GDP. One can quibble with the actual number, but whatever it is, it’s extraordinary.
Which brings us back to Musk and Mars. Given the amount of regulation and the money being diverted to “income security,” the likelihood that America will successfully be able to colonize Mars is small.
But here’s the thing… Mars is a bright, shiny object in the sky, and Musk can generate media relatively easily. Far closer to home, however, there are millions of other ideas and advances and companies that will never get off the ground or see the light of day because of government strangulation.
Years ago, I wrote a piece about entrepreneurship in America or, more specifically, about Christmas reindeer antlers. In it, I wrote, “Just as failure is the foundation upon which success is built, a culture that tolerates and even extols the frivolous fertilizes the garden from which the consequential emerges.” To the degree that the leviathan of government, from a regulatory and redistribution perspective, stops entrepreneurs from pursuing new ideas of all sorts, from risking failure in the pursuit of success, then the fertilizer that nourishes prosperity withers.
This brings us to another president, one who, thankfully, was not murdered despite a clearly orchestrated effort to make that happen. Donald Trump can become the greatest president in American history. He can do for a Mars landing exactly what JFK did for the Moon.
But it won’t be Mars, per se, that would make Trump the greatest. Rather, it would be his putting the nation back on the regulatory and financial footing that would allow such an out-of-this-world accomplishment. By slashing government regulations and “income security” spending, Trump will not only power us off the planet but, more importantly, empower terrestrial entrepreneurs and investors much closer to home.
This is Trump’s real path to legacy, which is to make America truly great again. By dramatically pruning the regulatory state and slashing government largesse, he will once again give Americans the means to create a new Pax Americana.
And as we saw from that first Pax Americana, American prosperity inspires and drives much of the same around the world. Combined with today’s technology, Trump would be the shepherd of the greatest advance in prosperity the world has ever seen. That’s how you Make America Great Again and, simultaneously, become immortal.
Follow Vince on Twitter at ImperfectUSA, or you can visit his new website Gratitude for America.
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