Space shuttle as symbol of America

Writing about the space shuttle disaster, Gregg Easterbrook in Time magazine gives expression to the liberal mindset that sees America not as a country but as the incarnation of liberal ideology and progress:

A spacecraft is a metaphor of national inspiration: majestic, technologically advanced, produced at dear cost and entrusted with precious cargo, rising above the constraints of the earth. The spacecraft carries our secret hope that there is something better out there—a world where we may someday go and leave the sorrows of the past behind. The spacecraft rises toward the heavens exactly as, in our finest moments as a nation, our hearts have risen toward justice and principle. And when, for no clear reason, the vessel crumbles, as it did in 1986 with Challenger and last week with Columbia, we falsely think the promise of America goes with it.

Truly, only a liberal could gaze upon the awe-inspiring sight of a space ship lifting off and be reminded of, apparently, the 1964 Civil Rights Act (“our finest moments as a nation, [when] our hearts have risen toward justice and principle”). And, by the same token, only liberals could think (though Easterbrook says they’re mistaken to do so) that the crash of a space ship means the end of liberalism, and thus the end of any larger meaning of America. But that’s what happens when you define your country as a progressive idea.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 03, 2003 03:35 PM | Send