Should There Be a Space Corps?

One of the many leftist mental breakdowns I’ve seen lately involves Trump’s announcement of a Space Corps.

My quite favorite tweet about it was this:

As you can tell, this woman, a luminary of my field (at least if you listen to critics and award givers), has decided to completely enter a science fiction universe, in which science is some sort of religion, which is supported by “belief” and can be “denied” instead of a discipline of arduous investigation of reality. Note also that the gods of Jemisin’s “science” won’t work for white supremacists.  In point of fact, Nazis — who were the only white supremacists with any power in living memory — did okay at science (until they subjugated it to ideology).  In her universe, also, Trump has “defense buddies” which, as we all know, is some sort of cabal that of course doesn’t believe that the country needs to be “defended”—because, duh, a country that has no borders doesn’t need defense (it needs the prayers for the dead, but that’s something else) – but wants to make money off guns and other evil! bad! deplorable! stuff. In this universe, also, we apparently have children “prison camps.”

One must award her points for either the performance art or the inventiveness of her creation.  I mean, other leftists are nattering on about children in cages and children in jails, without (by the way) the slightest connection to reality, but good old N. K. Jemisin can be counted on to go one further and invent children prison camps.  Now if only she could carry a plot in a bucket, she might appeal to people beyond her echo chamber.

But she’s not the only one with her panties in a bunch about a Space Corps. (Dear Jemisin, is Trump funneling money to his “defense buddies,” if that’s what you really think is happening, better or worse than Obama funneling money into the renewable energy boondoggles like Solyndra? Justify that. Show us the math. – Love and kisses, Sarah)  Unfortunately, I saw insanity from the right too, in the Libertarian/conservative groups I belong to.

“I don’t like it; it will lead to the militarization of space.”  “We don’t need to extend war outside the Earth.”

So, this is where I put my hands on my hips and speak with no restraint.

Guys, seriously. Where have humans gone that war hasn’t gone?

Earth, sea, under the sea, and the air, every time we extend our domain to a new frontier, war follows.  Infantry, Navy, Submarine Corps, Airforce.

You can sit there all day and moan about the inhumanity (not true.  It’s very much the humanity) and wish it were otherwise, but you can’t prevent it from happening.

Heinlein, curiously, in one of his novels had a space force devoted to keeping the peace on Earth.  This was young (relatively), idealistic Heinlein and in his defense, he had seen what the League of Nations became, but not what the UN would be.

In Space Cadet, the Space Patrol is run by a multinational body, and its duty is to prevent war from happening.  In the real world the only teeth our multinational body – the UN (I don’t remember if it was the same in Space Cadet) – has are those the U.S. gives it.  And honestly, it would be better if we didn’t.  Their supervisory bodies supposed to prevent everything from abuses against women and children to terrorism are shot through with countries that are prime exporters of such ills; its peace committee included countries like Russia and China at the height of the nuclear buildup; and its human rights committees includes/included at various points such luminaries as Syria.

In fact, any international body where voting/recognition is by country is going to include mostly kakistocracies and kleptocracies, for the simple reason that such systems make up a majority of the forms of governance known to humans.

Instead of preventing war, the UN is a body of intrigue and propaganda against western democracies, with each of the kleptocracies fighting only to be first in line for the Danegeld.

Which is why we must have a Space Corps.

Why?

Because the only peace this tired world has known for the last three-quarters of a century – in spots, here and there, at that – is the one that the U.S. has purchased for the last seventy years, with blood, treasure, sweat, and courage.

Europe has not eaten itself – yet – in another of their cyclical blood-soakings because the U.S. has taken most of their defense off their hands.  Whether that’s a good or bad thing, considering this has given them delusions that socialism works, delusions which are spreading across the Atlantic, is something I can’t tell you.  But the fact we’ve acted as their myrmidons is the only thing that has kept them from being taken by the Soviet Union (I have it on good authority they had replacement road signs in Cyrillic, to direct their tanks all the way to Portugal).

As far as the rest of the world, when we’ve seen really bad flareups, like the ones that fed most of Africa to Soviet-controlled Cuban forces, or the ones that gave most of South America to proxies for the Soviets, or the recent melt-downs in the Middle East, that was when Americans were preoccupied with their internal affairs and elected people like Jimmy Carter or, heaven help us, Barack Obama, who also thought war “should” not happen.  Such presidents didn’t realize we lived in an arduously bought Pax Americana and instead thought if the U.S. sat quietly at home, the rest of the world would be suffused in peace, flowers and unicorn farts.  Those were the periods where the world burned and millions died.

Should there be war in space?

Oh, heck, no.  If I ran the universe and were designing it to order, the human race would only be interested in peaceful scientific development (real science, not the religion dear Jemisin believes in) and exploration, and we’d all hold hands across the universe and sing kumbaya, or at least about a Coke and a smile.

But in the real world, if the United States doesn’t get ready to defend space, you know what will happen?  China, or Russia, or who knows what will get there first. Nations will shoot down each other’s satellites and destroy each other’s colonies.

What is going to stop them?  A treaty? The UN? How?

While I’m sure the UN would be happy to deploy its forces in the service of its “resolutions,” the same resolutions that time after time condemn Israel — the only representative government in the Middle East — while praising countries where women are wrapped in sofa covers, gays are thrown from roofs, and kids are taught to commit suicide in order to kill “infidels,” its forces tend to be effective only in procuring underage sex partners and adding to the local corruption.

Do I think the U.S. should be Space Police, as well as world police?  No, I don’t.  I have a little rant I can read you if you have two hours.

But in the world as it is, devoid of shoulds and woulds and coulds and wishful thinking, the U.S. is all that stands between the Earth and some tyrannical regime becoming good enough at space tech to get there and control and dominate us.  I don’t know if Heinlein’s idea of throwing rocks from the Earth to the moon is still considered scientifically sound, but I do know that space is really high up above the Earth, and that from a high position you can do all sorts of interesting military things. Things we don’t want China or Russia or heck, Saudi Arabia, doing to us.

Right now, in this time, in this place, the U.S. is the only country whose military will use its power not to subjugate all others, but to keep other nations free.

Right now, in this time, in this place, the U.S. is the country whose sons and daughters will join the Space Corps to give blood and sweat and treasure to keeping peace and liberty.

No, we shouldn’t need a Space Corps.  No, we shouldn’t need to defend ourselves from war in space.  But the world isn’t made of “should.”  It’s made of reality.

And since that’s the reality, yeah, we need a Space Corps. So the Earth stays peaceful long enough that in the vastness of space, peace and liberty might flourish.  If we’re very lucky.