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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 - 05:57am Nov 11, 2003 EST (# 17224 of 17228)
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.

bluestar23 - 03:32pm Nov 9, 2003 EST (# 17017 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.GfcHbeXyX3y.2661705@.f28e622/18732

Actually, what Showalter does after the 14th is what's interesting...I can't see him just folding the tent of World Peace with World Assets overnight.....

I started this year with this:

rshow55 - 08:20am Jan 1, 2003 EST (# 7177 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.GfcHbeXyX3y.2661705@.f28e622/8700

"I think this is a year where some lessons are going to have to be learned about stability and function of international systems, in terms of basic requirements of order , symmetry , and harmony - at the levels that make sense - and learned clearly and explicitly enough to produce systems that have these properties by design, not by chance."

Maybe there will be a chance to get some of that message out, anyway. With internet video coordinated with internet text and TV - some communication patterns are possible that didn't exist not long ago. There may be socially and commercially acceptable ways of working out deals that are more complicated than have been possible before. Deals that, after some time, converge on arrangements that are effective, and show disciplined beauty http://www.mrshowalter.net/DBeauty.html from many points of view - that are simple, effective, and durable.

A section before Lchic posted "the moment of Effective Truth," 12402-3 http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?8@13.GfcHbeXyX3y.2661705@.f28e622/14055 speaks of the

"job of figuring out how America could be, in some unavoidable ways, a "command economy" while also maintaining the freedoms and excellences of a free counry. (I'd written a paper with some connections to those problems as an intern at Ernst and Ernst the summer of 1967, and he (Eisenhower) had read it. )

America had to be both a competent command economy and a free democracy. It was a "contradiction" that he felt we had to find a way to sustain workably and gracefully. I think he was right about that. We haven't dealt with is workably and gracefully yet, and need to.

- - - - - - - -

To do much better than we're doing - we have to find ways to get facts straight - when it matters enough - against the inclination of power holders. Unless this is done, there is no solution to some of our most key problems. Good, stable closures simply are not possible.

Here is Berle: ( Power - Chapter II ) - see http://www.mrshowalter.net/a_new_0100s/md667n.htm

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."

That's plain and straight. Power holders want to limit the ability of others to determine facts because that extends their power. It is in the overwhelming collective interest to see that facts that matter enough are determined - both so that power can be reasonably limited - and because human beings have to make decisions on what they believe to be true.

If leaders of nation states had the wisdom, fortitude and courage to face the fact that there have to be limits on the right of people in power to decieve themselves and others, we'd live in a much more hopeful world. Limits that put some limits on personal political power and on sovereignty.

Maybe not severe limits. Maybe not limits applied with great consistency. But some limits. Enforced sometimes. When it matters enough.

If that were faced, the US would have to deal with some embarrassments. But an index of how much is screwed up, misunderstood, and deceptive is how well national groups treat their own citizens - and get along in the worldr - how well their cooperation works in human terms.

The US needs to do some thinking. The rest of the world should do a lot of thinking, too.

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