Imperial Stars 2-Republic and Empire (52 page)

As early as the seventeenth century Sir Roger Twysden said, "The world, now above some 5,500 years old, hath found means to limit kings, but never yet any republique." Alexis de Tocqueville, writing much later, had much the same thing to say. If America were ever to lose her freedom, it would be to a collectivist majority.

Professor Dicey has traced that trend in England. MacIlwain has done the same here. In every case, the root of the problem is the tendency to believe that government can do everything; that there is no problem we cannot "solve" by creating a government agency to deal with it.

A moment's thought would demonstrate that this is unlikely. Certainly it hasn't worked anywhere it has been tried, and few of us have more faith in the man who says, "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you," than we do that the check is in the mail.

In fact the solution to that problem is simple enough, although politically difficult: we simply must declare large parts of our life off-limits, outside the jurisdiction of government. It is unlikely that we can restrain government power once it is admitted anywhere, but we can prevent it from getting there in the first place. The issue of "Federal Aid to Education" was fought over jurisdiction. The battle was lost, Federal Aid came in, and the result was a school system we would go to war to overthrow if we could only figure out who the enemy is.

It isn't lack of resources.

It was fashionable, in the '50s, to speak of the "Affluent Society." John Kenneth Galbraith made his reputation writing about the coming era of plenty, in which the problems of production would all be solved, so that it only remained to see to equitable distribution of the wealth which would inevitably increase year by year. He saw that era as already upon us.

It didn't quite work that way, and within two decades an American President would tell us of the end of the dream and the era of limits; of national malaise. Oddly enough, John Kenneth Galbraith's reputation suffered not a whit from that, and he remained popular with the Carter Administration. Such are the ways of economists.

In fact, though, Galbraith was more right than Carter and the doomsayers. I doubt that the world will ever come to the point where everyone can have everything, but certainly the era of limits is very nearly over. Energy applied to resources with ingenuity equals production. There are no human economic problems that can't be solved, given plentiful energy and cheap raw materials. Food production is largely a function of fertilizer, and nitrogen fixation is easy if you have electricity. Pollution is merely an energy problem: electric automobiles can banish smog, provided we have the power to run the cars on. And for that matter, given sufficient energy, any pollutants can be taken apart to their constituent elements.

Both energy and raw materials await us in space. One nickle-iron asteroid contains more metals than have been refined since the beginning of civilization. There are thousands of such asteroids. We needn't go even that far. The lunar regolith is about 90 percent useful, and it's already conveniently ground into a fine powder. Meanwhile, the sun pours out a kilowatt per square meter on Earth and Moon alike. Once we have routine access to the space environment, the Affluent Era can begin in reality.

Getting there isn't that hard, or won't be if we don't depend on government, and bureaucracy, and the long, slow, careful "man rating" system NASA uses.

Nineteen eighty-six was a fateful year: it began with the Challenger disaster, which shows that the old ways were ended forever. We are now told that it will take NASA years to fix the shuttle: longer to design O rings than it took to design and build the infinitely more complex bombers and fighters of World War Two.

The year ended with Voyager: with Jeana Yaeger and Dick Rutan and their volunteer help and corporate supporters. No more than a hundred times their effort would plant a permanent colony on the Moon! It was fitting that 1986 ended with Dick Rutan walking around Voyager and saying, "See what free men can do."

That should always be the answer of republic to empire.

See what free men can do.