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Order Josh Hammer’s new book, Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West: HERE.
National confidence, unfortunately, is in short supply these days. In this season of springtime renewal, Americans would do well to look up — literally. Artemis II, NASA’s first meaningful manned space mission in over a half-century, has taken the nation by storm this month. In so doing, it has provided a timely reminder of what a great nation, acting with confidence and clarity of purpose, can still achieve.
Public polling confirms that Americans are a largely pessimistic lot. Our politics are fractured, our institutions mistrusted, and our birth and marriage rates have plummeted. Hope once sprang eternal, but today’s zeitgeist is characterized by an unshakeable malaise. The daring Artemis II mission offers a rebuttal to this debilitating defeatism. Artemis II is a powerful symbol that the United States still possesses the will and the capacity to do big things. It presents a ripe opportunity to rekindle an inspiring national ethos that has been lost — one fostering greatness, rewarding courage and embracing the frontier spirit.
Put simply, a great country is not satisfied with managed decline. A great country thinks boldly and acts boldly.
In this respect, Artemis II is deeply consonant with — indeed, it is an embodiment of — the political ethos of President Donald Trump and the broader MAGA movement. Stripped of caricature and distortion, “Make America Great Again” is, at its core, a call for national renewal — to reject complacency and reassert American leadership and excellence. Whether in trade, foreign policy or space exploration, the premise is the same: America should lead, not follow.
Space exploration has long been one of the clearest arenas in which American leadership manifests itself. At the height of the Cold War, NASA’s Apollo program had a loftier mission than merely beating the Soviets to the moon; the goal was to demonstrate to the world the superiority of American freedom and the American way of life. Now, Artemis II carries forward that legacy in a new geopolitical context — one in which rivals like China are racing to assert dominance on land, air, sea and beyond. If the 21st century is going to be an American century and not a Chinese century, missions like Artemis II will be crucial.
Yet Artemis II is not just a story about national power. It is also one about individual character. Consider Victor Glover, the mission’s pilot. In an era obsessed with identity politics and the divvying up of individuals into racial, ethnic and sexual categories, Glover has offered a refreshing perspective. When recently asked about becoming the first Black astronaut deployed by NASA on a lunar mission, Glover fundamentally rejected the premise: “It’s about human history. It’s the story of humanity — not Black history, not women’s history — but that it becomes human history.” This is a tremendous, and inspiring, rebuke of today’s suffocating wokeism.
Equally significant — if not more so — is Glover’s openness about his Christian faith. He has openly spoken about the imperatives of studying God’s Creation from orbit, and he took a personal copy of the Bible with him on the journey. Glover is a throwback to an older, bygone era — one in which the most renowned scientists, such as Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon, understood their endeavors as a means of employing human reason to better understand God’s Creation. This is a much more cogent understanding of the scientific enterprise than the false tension between science and religion that is often peddled today.
Taken together, the Artemis II mission and the individuals who have carried it out offer a powerful counternarrative to the dour pessimism, censorious wokeism and rampant atheism of our age. This is a mission that embodies the best of America: technological prowess, individual excellence and a willingness to venture into the unknown to do big, bold and beautiful things. It is a story that has united Americans of all political, religious, racial and ethnic stripes.
In short, Artemis II is a feel-good story. And frankly, we could use more of those.
The United States has always been at its best when it chooses outward-looking hope over inward-looking cynicism. Artemis II is a reminder that such a choice is still readily available to us. The question is whether we will choose correctly — and, in turn, help make the 21st century a distinctly American century.
What is this business about seeing the far side of the moon for the first time? Frank Borman recited Bible verses in December 1968 from Lunar orbit. That crew orbited the moon ten times. They couldn’t see the entire back side at once from the altitude at which they traveled, but they were the first of 10 missions on which the command module orbited the moon and thus traveled over the far side.
Everybody knows there is no such thing as space lol.
This is when the division and divisiveness will end:
Philippians 2:
10 That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
11 And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father
I’m afraid I’m not as sanguine as the writer suggests and just hope the guy can do his job. Because with a high profile mission such as this one do we want a DEI person with his hand on the throttle. So many of the other missions e.g. Apollo 13 which needed the absolutely best and brghtest solving their existential problems – both at Mission control when the head of the mission threw down the articles and said ‘ Gentlemen – this is what we have. Failure is not an option.” what if something like that happens again. Who wants a black pilot in the cockpit of a jet. or a doctor? It’s that tiny difference that makes all the difference. That extra speck of genius that allows Elon Musk create his miracles. Maybe its from the guilt of history but where did this start? That all inhabitants of the planet have equal abilities? Goes back to that old story: How many Jews play basketball? But how many have won Nobel Prizes? (Many more than their numbers would suggest). And so we parade that phony Neil Degrasse Tyson – whatever and ignore the millions of others who couldn’t even become a media creation or holograph – like him. Woe to us for believing the propaganda. In the 30’s there was a Soviet agronomist who claimed a certain scientific fact to be true about plant growth. The Soviets paid the price for such self- delusion and suffered for it. I’m sure this guy on Artemis is a nice god believing dude but the pilot of that mission???? The ancient Greeks changed the world by truth telling. We’ve given that up in favor of sentiment and destruction follows.
The Great American Play Series
You are ASSUMING that Mr. Glover is a “DEI” hire. Where is you EVIDENCE?
I would be more concerned with the Canadian first and then the woman, but I don’t know them so I’ll assume they are competent until given a reason to think otherwise.
“The ancient Greeks changed the world by truth telling.”
Good point.
What was their “truth?”
Too bad their “truth” didn’t set them free from decline.
Well the Septuagint was translated into Greek sometime in the B.C. At that point they could tell the truth.
Josh Hammer is such a fantastic addition to the rare-to-find serious thinkers and writers at FPM.
Nobody is going to Mars. At least, not before the 2100’s, or “Anti-Grav” propulsion is possible allowing great amounts of mass (supplies, etc.) to arrive in ten days or so. Four “Best Friends” in a Winnebago sized capsule for 10 days? Doable. The same, for six or seven months? HA HA HA! You funny!!