Tearing Down American Exceptionalism: It's NASA's Turn

The 4th of July is a uniquely American holiday.  It's more than just celebrating our independence; it's about the historic character of this country aspiring to higher ideals.  So it was quite a stunner to finish up the quintessential American holiday by reading that NASA will not only no longer focus on space exploration, but instead, as described by NASA administrator, Charles Bolden, Pres Obama has asked him to focus on three things:

"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview.

Bolden went on further:

He said the United States is not going to travel beyond low-Earth orbit on its own and that no country is going to make it to Mars without international help. 

The WH has stood by his comments.  Bolden is already catching flak from the former administrator of NASA, Michael Goodwin:

NASA ... represents the best of America. Its purpose is not to inspire Muslims or any other cultural entity," Michael Griffin, who served as NASA administrator during the latter half of the Bush administration, told FoxNews.com....

Griffin said Tuesday that collaboration with other countries, including Muslim nations, is welcome and should be encouraged -- but that it would be a mistake to prioritize that over NASA's "fundamental mission" of space exploration

. 

"If by doing great things, people are inspired, well then that's wonderful," Griffin said. "If you get it in the wrong order ... it becomes an empty shell." 

Griffin added: "That is exactly what is in danger of happening." 

He also said that while welcome, Muslim-nation cooperation is not vital for U.S. advancements in space exploration. 

"There is no technology they have that we need," Griffin said.

Obama's thinking is symptomatic of postmodern multiculturalism.  Multiculturalism
originated from the progressive movement on the Left, and has ideological similarities to socialism.  Socialism started as a way to level the economic playing field for different classes in society.  When the brutalities of socialism in the USSR and China came to light, it largely fell out of favor. However, committed leftists latched onto multiculturalism, a relativistic philosophy that carried to its logical conclusion, is anti-reason.  Antonio Gramsci, a committed Italian Communist, observed that the failure of socialist revolutionary fervour to take root among the proletariat was due largely to western cultural hegemony.  This cultural unity lent itself to support the capitalist status-quo, since the majority of the population adopted the same systematic beliefs, norms and values. Only by attacking this hegemony could socialism finally prevail.  How would this western-centric ideological hegemony be countered?  Enter multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism seeks to level the playing field between cultures by pretending there is nothing uniquely superior or special about any one nation-state or civilization (definitely not western civilization, which is seen as racist).  Instead, each society should accept many cultures that retain their own cultural autonomy, in contrast to assimilation and social integration.  As if redistribution of income isn't enough, Obama seeks to amazingly, socially engineer the choice of participants in space exploration. This goes beyond the more benign multiculturalist goal of celebrating a particular group's scientific achievements.  NASA will no longer represent rugged American individualism in exploration--it must now be a collectivist effort.  Not only is he attempting to change the individualistic ethos of American culture through what's seen as a unique American institution of NASA, he also seeks how to allocate space exploration by swearing off any US space exploration outside low earth orbit UNLESS other countries can participate in it so we do not make them feel inferior.  This politicizes science and impedes its progress by seeking buy-in from the collective, which often results in the lowest common denominator in thinking.  This is a consequence of socialism and multiculturalism:  these ideologies specifically penalize success whether in the workplace, or in celebrating a culture's achievements.     

It's a fatal utopian vision that belongs to the no-borders crowd; multiculturalists and socialists believe the nation-state is just a stepping stone that will eventually be overcome to a more perfect, collectivist society.  Marxists like Eric Hobsbawm seek to deny any useful identity  to the nation-state, instead describing it as a social abstraction. The nation-state is simply an "imagined community" the elites found useful to construct given their historical circumstances at the time.  While there are historical accuracies within Hobsbawm's description, such reductionist thinking is quite destructive.  It ultimately undermines the strengths of a civilization, recognizing little value in its very existence.  And in this light, the idea of independent frontiersmen of American history, the pioneers, explorers, and yes, astronauts, are outdated.  One must instead succumb to the stifling conformity of an ideological mantra that repeats everyone, all cultures, are equal in condition, no matter what experience may tell one otherwise, or whatever the consequences.  Space as the final frontier, be damned.