Word: commitment
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...reason some of our liberal-radical detractors hate and fear the space program. They regard us of middle America as so many cows, to be milked without limit for their social programs. To keep us docile, they try to make us feel guilty for crimes we didn't commit, racial hatreds we don't feel (some of us are black too), poverty we didn't create. Apollo 11 smashed through that unearned guilt the way it punched through the Florida skies. Hearing "The Eagle has landed," no power on earth could have deprived us of the pride...
...long day, the eeriest moment came at the beginning of the Chicago ceremonies. As the huge crowd quieted down, the familiar voice of John Kennedy, recorded during a 1961 special message to Congress, echoed across the vast, suddenly silent plaza. "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth . . . " The hush acknowledged the setting of an awesome task only eight years ago, a time that seemed to be both very recent and oddly remote. The cheering that ensued...
...writers in any real danger. But he passes a tortured judgment on himself as well as other Soviet intellectuals. "I now believe," he says, "that the main reason why many highly intelligent and able people do not escape from there is because the Soviet regime has forced them to commit such cowardly acts that no amount of repentance can absolve them. There...
Some complaints were more sentimental. For centuries, the Japanese have celebrated the annual Night of the Full Moon by composing haiku. In Tokyo, one poetaster objected: "Now that the poesy of it is all gone, what can one do -commit hara-kiri?" In Vietnamese legend, the moon is represented by Hang-Nga, a beautiful maiden; "Now she is no longer a virgin," a Saigon intellectual lamented. Tel Aviv's Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren offered a 20th century amendment to a 12th century Hebrew prayer on the eve of the new moon. For 800 years, it has read...
...well provoke a useful debate over the nation's priorities. The severest critics of space tend to cast the issue in terms of a hard choice between space and social tasks. Jerome Wiesner, John Kennedy's scientific adviser, says typically that "it would be a mistake to commit $100 billion to a manned Mars landing when we have problems getting from Boston to New York City...