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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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rshow55 - 12:52pm Jul 9, 2003 EST (# 12916 of 12919)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

Adolf Berle was first a guest at the White House and the Oval Office in 1913, as an 18 year old - a guest of a senator who was a trusted friend of the President. Berle had the good fortune and connections to serve at the Versailles conference after World War I. He was involved with, and studied, power relationships - military, economic, and political, all through his life. He was a senior "brain trust" advisor to Roosevelt from 1932, and an assistant Secretary of State under Roosevelt and Truman.

I've quoted Berle's Power many times on this thread - because I've felt that Berle thought hard about basics that are fundamental and unchangeable - and about challenges we have to face.

In a real sense, a newspaper - still more a thread like this - is "powerless" - but even so, it can be important, because ideas are an essential part of human affairs - including power relations.

Here are quotes from Adolf Berle: 10068 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.lmvubT9ooui.189889@.f28e622/11613

"Power is invariably personal. However attained, it can be exercised only by the decision and act of an individual.

"No collective category, no class, no group of any kind weilds power or can use it. Another factor must be present. That of organization. The collective group must put itself together, must develop formal or informal structure - must establish stated and unstated rules by and through which power to decide and act is assigned to someone and, as a rule,, distributed through a hierarchy of subordinates.

"Without this organization . . . no collective group can or ever does act. . .

"In the hands or mind of an individual, the impulse toward power is not inherently limited. Limits are imposed by extraneous fact and usually also by conscience and intellectual restraint. Capacity to make others do what you wish knows only those limitations. Either you cannot or you consciously decide that you will not. . .

" Normal individuals have a high content of internal restraint based on a system of ideas and morals in which they were brought up or to which they agree. Power holders know this; hence their concern with systems of ideas and of morals. To extend power beyond the reach of their fist, they must foster a situation where the people within scope of their power act predictably, will follow instructions, will maintain a degree of order. If need be, or course, order can be produced by force. The mother knows that, in case of ultimates, she can spank her smaller children. She can do htis only occasionally; domestic order must hold together most of the time without that resort. Because of this as well as because of moral conviction, she tries to instill principles of obedience, consideration, regard for orderly life. So, in different application, does every power holder in great or small affairs.

For fundamental reasons, power and ideas are connected. And people who hold power have an obligation to find ways to be right - and to explain themselves.

rshow55 - 01:13pm Jul 9, 2003 EST (# 12917 of 12919)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

Bush Defends War, Sidestepping Issue of Faulty Intelligence By DAVID E. SANGER and CARL HULSE http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/09/international/worldspecial/19CND-INTE.html

. . . .

I've been a great deal of trouble to The New York Times since well before In the Crowd's Frenzy, Echoes of the Wild Kingdom By NATALIE ANGIER , Published three years ago today, on July 9, 2000 http://www.mrshowalter.net/IntheCrowd'sFrenzy.htm

I've had to deal with a very difficult constraint:

I had promised that I would never, under any circumstances, reveal my relationship with Eisenhower except face to face to a proper authority.

I've been doing my best. Fallibilities, occasional misjudgements, and all .

I think that The New York Times - subject to its own limitations and fallibilities, has been, too.

lchic - 03:59pm Jul 9, 2003 EST (# 12918 of 12919)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Excellent posts Showalter.

Infants don't look to be chastised --- they are small learning machines who take great joy in establishing their place and role in the domestic and local environs.

People take joy in developing a role and sets of inter-relationships - they look to improvingly high standards of leadership to move upwards and forwards within their local and wider community.

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New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense