FORTY YEARS - Man walked on the moon 40 years ago today. 

Yet, remarkably, one quarter of all young people believe it was a hoax.  What a comment on the "educational" system that serves us, and which has, in the four decades since the depressing sixties, done so much to tear down the image of America in the minds of its young.

But we did go to the moon - unless, of course, you believe that a conspiracy of thousands, not one of whom talked, perpetrated a fraud.  If you believe that, you probably believe 9-11 was an inside job and that the Japanese planes above Pearl Harbor were filled with high-spending tourists.

The flight to the moon celebrated American greatness - imagination, capability, determination.  President Kennedy had set the goal, and the goal was reached.  Few Americans complained about the cost because they understood that there was something larger than material gain in the moon flight - there was a spiritual quest that defines, more than budgets and scientific equations, a great nation.

Are we a great nation today?  Of course we are.  But we are suffering under the weight of failing institutions - our universities, our media - that are diminishing our greatness, and even mocking it.  After all, the most covered story of 1969 was the flight to the moon.  The most covered story so far in 2009 was the death of Michael Jackson.  Please compare.

In 1969 we still had veterans of World War II who were in their forties.  Men and women who'd built and flown propeller planes in the greatest conflict in human history saw their country embark upon, and succeed in, the greatest adventure in human history.  They knew that the emblem placed on the moon was an American flag, rather than a Nazi swastika, because of their sacrifice.

Today there are too many Americans who doubt sacrifice, or even ridicule it.  That attitude was encouraged by some of the social upheavals that, like the moon flight, also defined the sixties.

Which spirit will we have in the future - the spirit of '69, and the flight to the moon, or the other spirit of the sixties, which sought to tear down rather than to build?  It is up to us to reclaim the good and reject the dismal.  That is the new challenge we face, and the outcome is always in doubt.

July 20, 2009