Open Letter/Essay: Turning Era for History

 

Open Letter/Essay: Turning Era for History

--Short version

By Tim Krenz

April 10, 2024

Copyright © 2024 The CEPIA CLUB LLC

History holds numerous turning points. For people living in times of great changes, a perceptive few saw these changes approaching. When the hour struck, on the other hand, the majority of the people only then realized the chimes had rung. How the turning points changed everything in the contemporary circumstances left few unaffected. Change came. Most individuals and all institutions changed with them, as matters of necessity. The ones who resisted change fell behind or perished. In some cases, the changes came for the betterment of the people affected, or in certain instances, for those who survived. When better things resulted, people and their trusted, capable leaders had clear vision, high competence, sound confidence, and the hard-earned recognition to do the right things for the right reasons.

The United States of America, like the entire world, most likely now approaches one of those decisive turning points. The moment, rich with peril and possibly opportunity, presents people and leaders on every side with choices. How these individuals respond to the times and the courses of action they choose to follow will determine the collective fates of all.

The same turning points have happened in America in the 248 years since Independence. Some more sad, some more useless, some mixed and unfortunate. Yet the turning points happened, and some brought the United States to the brink of dissolution. Some brought carnage. Of these changes, the many failed to act, while the one individual or a small group consolidated their acts in ways detrimental to the majority and their liberty.

For bad examples:

Years following the war of the Revolution, Alexander Hamilton used the Constitution to implement his system of debt legitimacy and credit to anchor the new Federal system as the primary authority in the new world. All things financial and all the legalities of the world, including American foreign war and domestic coercion to enforce them, stem from Hamilton's vision.

Andrew Jackson, as general and President, created a system of politics (and the Democratic Party) that played on the emotions of spoils and popularity, and promoted the system of conquest, and settlement across the continent. Even Thomas Jefferson probably never dreamed such nightmares.

In the Antebellum America, a combination of homesteading, railroads, industrialization, immigration, land ownership and urbanization, and the ancient scourge of human chattel slavery gave rise to causes of secession, centralization, and the Republican Party. The Civil War decided who would control this whole system. Even though the war settled the question of slavery, the war ultimately decided on how the spoils would get divided, thus building on and consolidating Jackson’s democracy system.

In 1932, the global great depression and mass poverty, the Bonus Army and President Hoover’s and General MacArthur’s reaction to that, populism and Huey Long, and socialism, etc.--all had brought the United States to another turning point. Then came the New Deal and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s campaign for President. His election that year might have stopped a revolt form below and an impending catastrophe. It did provoke a plan by many on Wall Street to conduct a coup, through agency of BRIG GEN. Smedly Butler, USMC, who betrayed their secret cabal. Like others at turning points, FDR changed the nature of politics in America with his alignment of voters. He promised them the New Deal to feed and employ them. :In turn it took people away from a heritage of cultural localism and away from the extended family as a social mainstay. FDR’s promise brought the country closer, in turn, to more centralization and government as paternal caretaker of the needs of its citizens. Appealing to the poor, the illiterate, the minorities, all who suffered significantly from the depression, and taking the votes of many of the educated class and the unionized labor, FDR promised that the spoils would now no longer go to the victor. Now they went from the private sector to the government, through the intermediaries, and back to those who gave it originally. In this great realignment of big government for big power and big profit, this system has essentially endured until now, regardless of party.

All of these turning points in the history of the United States have happened in the history of the world as well. These events usually begin with some revolutionary or new things or an invention or even a better, simpler idea. Where did these events go wrong for the freedom of the many? The results trended towards more injustice for mostly everyone, regardless of differences, due to a lack of sound mass leadership that promoted and protected the common interest of a liberty for all.

The world has debt, as it always has, because it measures wealth in gold and not in the golden rule. It has wars and threats of wars, because leaders prey over and manipulate the fear and greed of humans. While it always has since invention, the threat of nuclear weapons and omnicide (or the death of everything) hangs a shroud around the future. The end could come from a miscalculation of interests or sheer stupidity or from an absolute evil. The world has poor, starvation, and illiteracy. Worse, it has the angst and fear of uncertainty. The death trap the world faces, however, may exist in the philosophical, the inability of current ideas and imagination to agree to disagree, and still live in non-violent and non-coercive peace. All signs point to a fight, between those who would enslave through authority and violence and opposed by those who want the world to work in freedom and amity.

How can this get resolved? How does the tension of anxiety in people translate into another form, like a vigilantly permanent peace?

First, the best hope for peace and tranquility anywhere comes in the conviction that united peoples, united movements, and united states can achieve great things, and the right things. The common goal will always remain a country of liberty for all, safe within itself, and truly free in this world.

Second, everyone and especially every voter must understand these opportunities to change everything only come rarely. United, everyone must seize this moment. The country, the world, have no other choice. Taking action, in positive ways, saves the future by freeing things in the present. The risk of failure to make better choices now, of ignoring the dangers or missing the historic significance of this next turning point, may become fatal, in all ways.

History has examples of catastrophe coming from points like these, but those disastrous circumstances concluded by centralized authority and power profits getting stronger. They did so only because the majority of people failed to unite and act when they should have.

On the contrary, when people united behind a creed, a philosophy, or a faith in somethings, great transformations happened—take the Buddha, Jesus, and Gandhi, for example. Even if individuals initially started a turning point, they did not transform it alone, nor did their idea, their belief or their hopes end with them.

For this era and our next great opportunity to change things, liberty and freedom—for everyone and everywhere—hold the great power the country needs. Libertarianism, as a philosophy contains within itself the belief that truly free people best represent the future for peace. And a growing faith among those who act in Liberty’s name possesses for the world the last true hope for it.

Join together. Make history happen, the true way at last.

Review of— ter Maat, Mike, ed. A Gold New Deal: Teh Government We Will Tolerate.

 

Review Essay

By Tim Krenz

April 6, 2024

Review of—

ter Maat, Mike, ed. A Gold New Deal: Teh Government We Will Tolerate. (No data on publishing information). https://goldnewdeal.org/

What does the editor and these authors mean by “a Gold New Deal?” Why do they present this book of eclectic essays as “the government we will tolerate?” The answers come from the collector/editor of the book, Mike ter Maat, and himself the author of the particular essay entitled, “A Gold New Deal.”

How the essays succeed depend on the reader’s understanding of two very important realities of American politics today. First, where does the United States find itself heading under the corruption and absolute power held by the relative few who currently control almost 350 million America lives? Second, how can the country break the hold of those few by embracing a Gold New Deal, and then move forward to more freedom for people?

As a candidate for United States President in 2024, Mike ter Maat takes the central role in the book’s most important contribution. His essay incorporates the name from his campaign theme, “A Gold New Deal,” and he presents a clear and literate statement of what he thinks can help restore the country, by his policy statements mostly in the essay, and some by those of his contributors.

Ironically, readers will recall the New Deal in American history, promised by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 national elections. No matter what a person thinks of FDR and his program, that President in the 1930s radically changed the social and political power relationships in the United States, away from a heritage of localism, away from family-centric households, and away from benevolent societies, like churches. Whether or not necessary, FDR’s New Deal stopped a revolution, and a counter-revolution, and realigned American politics for a century, creating the individual’s dependency under a central Federal government.

To overturn that dependency ter Maat and friends present an insightful outline of how a Libertarian Presidency can transform the country. The Gold New Deal, if ter Maat succeeds, would reserve the poles of power, realigning a central government on a balance that unequally favors both people and the individual states where they live.

All of the essay contributors help point the direction the country can take under a libertarian philosophy of life and maintenance, with or without any government involvement. The essay “Medical Freedom,” by Irene Mavrakakis, states the obvious need for a government—all and any government—to stay far away from the personal healthcare decisions of humans, and to stay out of the private relationship of informed choices and consents between a patient and her or his medical advisor. Mavrakakis also clearly spells out a need far past its necessary time to implement, that of the separation of science and the state, in order for the most objectivity of science to avoid the corruption of the government and its subjective manipulations.

Other critical essays in A Gold New Deal include “The Age of Meritocracy: Bitcoin is NOT Democratic,” by Alexander Svetski, which describes a new era of political-economy possibler by the development of cryptocurrencies. Joel Extine, in “Our Abusive Relationship with Government,” sets forth the ethical examination of how government subjectively creates the fear and oppression complex, from which arises the slavish submissions among intimidated and rather co-dependent citizens. Extine’s ethical objective analysis of the need to make better decisions for ourselves, by protecting the rights of all to change the abusive coercion of government, provides convincing, intelligent and “smart ammunition for a peaceful struggle for freedom, on the inside and outside everyone.

All of these Libertarian essays reinforce Mike ter Maat’s central theme—of the collection, of his own essay, and of his hopes for the Presidency. In the country, mired in corruption, and ruled by an elite few over the many multitudes, a Libertarian administration can provide new political relationships of power. These new relationships build in favor of the many and away from the few. The new relationships proposed by the ter Maat’s Gold New Deal promise to devolve powers, firstly to the people, and then to the local and state governments closest to them. How well this can succeed will depend on those multitudes willing to listen to his message of A Gold New Deal. The messenger has proven his willingness to advocate for them, in turn.

A Gold New Deal, like the book says, offers a radical change as significant in 2024 as it proved in 1932, but for the opposite reasons. In 1932, FDR’s New Deal inaugurated the Federal government’s primacy and purpose to expand its own reach and power to shape life in America, and eventually in the post-depression/post-war world. A Gold New Deal promises to undo that, in favor of a balance of constitutional limits, as conceived and devised, to separate and preserve powers between the central government, the states as partners, and ultimately to the judgment and discretion of the people individually. Empowering the people’s latent desire for freedom from coercive and ruinous government by the few opens the vistas of a peaceful future.

As a whole, A Gold New Deal: The Government We Will Tolerate brings these half-vignettes and half-platforms of Libertarians to a format that promotes a candidate with a vision, one more complete and more whole than voters usually hear or read. The book forms a starting of the “why, when, where, how, and what” of Mike ter Maat’s campaign for United States President in 2024. As the “Who,” Mike ter Maat as editor, essayist and candidate presents his case AS the reason that voters should cast their ballots for him, and for the “best deal,” a Gold New Deal, that Americans might get for freedom in a world that needs a new start.

Season's Song: For Katie & Marius

 

For Katie & Marius for their wedding, on March 17, 2024

Season’s Song

by Pi Kielty, p.h.

Here we start,

this season spring;

when fruit trees bloom

with platinum rings

Sunshine parks

we walk along;

holding hands

in summer’s warm throngs

In fall months,

when leaves pop bright;

we take ease

in our rainfall nights

Comes winter.

The Earth gone round;

our new time

to watch snowfall sounds

Hope’s seasons--

unending long.

Devotion

to our season’s songs

Hope’s for time,

our seasons go,

every day

from our blooms to snow

Wedding day!!

To start this feast,

Our seasons—

Love, bless them all, please.

“We do.”

[REPEAT ALL] “We do….”

Cepiaclub’s Statement on the Israeli-Hamas War of 2023

 

The Cepia Club LLC

www.cepiaclub.com

Copyright © 2023 The Cepia Club LLC

October 11, 2023

Cepiaclub’s Statement on the Israeli-Hamas War of 2023

As both a business and an organization of like-minded people, all devoted to world peace and prosperity, we look with horror on the events taking place in and around the State of Israel and the territories of Palestine, particularly that of Gaza. While the elements of the state of war that now exist all predate the recent and current events, it has myriad causes, harmful influences, and the conflicts of rights and interests for everyone it involves.

The Cepia Club LLC and Cepiaclub denounce the initiation of force and violence—in any form—by any nation or group or individual, in order to solve political, economic, social, or cultural differences.

Our groups believe in the dignity of the individual to protect themselves and their families and friends, and to have sole and undivided self-ownership of their personal opinions, bodies, properties, and to “the bread of their own labor.” In order to own these rights, and the sacred responsibilities for them, people must remain free from the threat or use of force by anyone who would cause them harm or steal these fruits of life from them.

We work so that each person everywhere may enjoy and pursue their happiness, free from the ageless sources of conflict, those human demons of fear and greed: Causes for war upon others or by others.

In the world of human liberty and freedom we hope to build as a movement and philosophy for life, we believe war comes more often and becomes more deadly as political leaders militarize foreign and defense policies. As a result of the misuses of power by the powerful, war has become profitable for the few who make most of the decisions. The insanity of war and escalation, and of reprisal and retribution, must all come to an end. If not, humanity will destroy itself.

The Cepia Club LLC and Cepiaclub ask people everywhere to work with us using positive, tolerant, spirited, and peaceful measures to help us build a world where liberty and freedom thrive without war and its corruption of the human soul.

May we achieve the universal dream:

Peace on Earth; Goodwill toward All.

Thank you,

Tim Krenz

Owner, The Cepia Club LLC; & Director, Cepiaclub

Pi Kielty’s Mandates for the Youth

 

Pi Kielty’s Mandates for the Youth

By Pi Kietly,

p.h., 2023

Dear Young People,

Please, take these mandates seriously, and consider using them in your journey in this existence. I learned them, too late, and I always learned them the hard, bitter way; sometimes even sadly, or in tragedy. I hope they help you to grow up and become a happier person, no matter what.

Mandate One: Take educating yourself seriously. Learn as much as you can, do it always, and in any way possible. Stay teachable. Absorb wisdom from the lessons of others. It make things easier, and it lessens the inevitable pain in life. Knowledge determines destiny.

Mandate Two: Stay physically fit. Take care of and respect your health. Build strength and your moral determination to persist. These actions also build better character and attitude. In your body, you own the only ship in your storms, and that vessel will keep your life afloat. Only your body and mind will take you where you want or need to go in life.

Mandate Three: Help your friends and family and neighbors, because where you live affects you the most, and you can help that place in positive ways—if you choose. Own the right and responsibility to care about, serve, and protect others, especially those in need. We must live here together, or we will all perish alone.

Mandate Four: Stay involved and participate in civic affairs. Exercise the ownership of your rights and privileges, your responsibilities and duties, or else those will all disappear if not maintained with vigilance. When lost they will vanish for everyone and forever. Become peaceful warriors for: justice, fairness, tolerance, and empathy. At the end of everything, leave the better world for those to come after you. Do not let hate and indifference destroy our homes. Forgive the past and the present, or no one will have a future.

Sincerely yours,

[Signed]

Pi Kielty

Meeting Notes & Minutes, 2nd Annual Candidates & Campaigns Conference, Facilitated by Cepiaclub

 

2^nd Annual Candidates & Campaigns Conference

Hosted by the Libertarian Party of Polk County Members (LPPCM—Wisconsin)

Facilitated by The Cepia Club LLC

July 15, 2023

Meeting Notes & Minutes

Opening: brief introductions, discussed Cepia Club, and Phil Anderson’s history. Meeting goal – discuss strategy over a platform and develop ideas we can use going forward.

Libertarian Party of Polk County Members

Second Annual Candidates & Campaigns Conference Saturday, July 15, 2023, 11:00 AM to 2:30 PM Village Pizzeria, Dresser, WI 54009

Key Topic to Address:

"How can Libertarians build for successful politics and campaign to WIN elections!"

Working discussion subjects:

1) How do Libertarians define successful politics?

Ross – let's Define Success: successful points success is a case that leads to a win in politics.

Notes – at the national level, the Libertarian party there is an issue that some of the party won't move from their ideas( there were a few stories and anecdotes during this point ) Ross further noted that is important to read the room and know who you're speaking.

The libertarian party should be open to ideas and principles and it's important to compromise without moving away from the core values of the Libertarian ideology.

Tim – Being a libertarian outside of just elections, showing those ideas

Turning a person's experience into a strategy. Create a narrative – that can be used to tell a story that clicks emotionally this should lead to a Eureka moment.

Ross – recommends “the man nobody knows” by Bruce Barton This book brings together logic and emotion and went to use them The book uses an allegory to describe Modern Advertising.

Tim and Phil – People are in a type of codependent relationship with the government we need to be there to show them that there's a better option. It's the choose the lesser of two evils mentality we need to be a better option.

Tim – Culture is key and critical

Phil – Some current strategies that didn't work Ron Paul's ending of the Fed was not a winning one ending the FED goes over the head of most of the electorate, largely because it doesn't directly affect them however Paul’s argument for peace was a winning argument That caught people's attention.

Note: How do we bring ending the Fed to people'sattention? This was never covered but brought up.

points summarized

1. Middle verses division or finding common ground

2. Educating people this can mean many things from what the libertarian party is about to what we as indevdiuals can do to change the political landscape.

3. Message and image

4. Creating an emotional appeal

2) What goal(s) concretely represent success?

Local level –

1) Find someone to run and have an aligned mesage

2) In an area find a good candidate with high numbers higher population means more potential members – its math.

3) Double members both recurrent and new – we fail to retain members and are slow to breing in new members,

3.2) really just double membership, money, and anything else that can be doubled.

4) comradery is key

5) “Get with the Times” – update our media presence – Media has shifted away from the “Big 5” to Youtube, tiktok, twitter etc.

6) 30 second clips on Social media is the “New media” . only showing examples of what happening avoiding any fluff and opinion.

3) As a matter of the practical, identifiable political objective(s) for the Libertarian

Party, how do we match the goal(s) to obtain both?

Tim – Have a libertarian candidate win a race by 2024. Example would be sheriff or distract attorney.

Arin – Media monetization.

Phil – to have a canidate represented on the polls.

Bill – Educate the populace on the mesage of the Libertarian party.

Kay – Strengthen female numbers, participation, and representation (double it).

Lynn – Work to find common ground with those who are interested in the party.

Paul – Do more Salons that can help show the common ground.

Ross – Create oppritunities to discover common ground.

4) As measures, or strategies, to achieve the objective, to fulfill the policy goal(s), where does the Libertarian Party start and how does it end?

Where it ends – the world is free and there is no goverment.

To get there:

Lynn – Government is broken down in a narrow sense: schools are governed at a local level, Universities and medical at the state level Fed at the infurstructure level roads etc.

Paul – finding an image that resonates with the people.

The rest of the group – Non-currupt goverment and reduce goverment size.

5) What actions at the "tip of the spear," i.e. activism, will most effectively maintain the focus on the objectives and achieve the political objective?

Tim – Hand shakes and coffee. Getting out on the ground and meeting with people one on one or in small gatherings as much as possible.

Phil and Ross – persuasive media, hitting the main point(s) efficiently, three times daily. Control the message and always bring it back to you.

Arin and Paul – offer a civil space

6) What format(s) or structure(s) of organization and leadership does the Libertarian Party need to adapt or reject to achieve the objective?

Tim – personal connections, meetings in person over online as much as possible. The structure should be on the work, not the

Phil – Organization should be from the ground up. In-person meetups building from local to the state, not the post above to the ground.

Lynn – the members should do the work – living by example

Paul – The party should be working through civility and common ground. We should be helping people understand its not a wasted vote when voting for any party.

Arin – get across the central mesage

Ross – helped to get to these messages

7) Finally, how can Libertarian Party members, activists, and supporters best carry the example and message of the Libertarian Way, to succeed?

Phil – Cares about how people live their lives – people being allowed to live life to its fullest and toward their full potential. You have to care and it has to show.

Space: Possibilities and Ambitions Unlimited: Part II—Dirty Origins

 

Space: Possibilities and Ambitions Unlimited: Part II—Dirty Origins

By Tim Krenz

April 13, 2023

The early effort to get humanity off the planet and into orbit took the aspect of a competition, the Space Race: A vigorous and hostile, win or lose challenge between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. More so, the military of both countries drove the early competition, pushing the technical agendas and developing the equipment to win the prize. That prize, merely one dimension of the Cold War between the West and the East, held the stakes as the champion of the world as achieved by the winners system of civilization.

In the eyes of that world, the reward of prestige would go to which country, the USA or the USSR, won the minds and imaginations of the rest of humanity. Everything about the early Space Race, though, had a dual dynamic, of either one for launching objects and people into orbital space, or the other for delivering nuclear weapons against its adversary.

Both the American and the Soviet military captured two valuable assets at the end of the Second World War. Into their hands, these presumed allies obtained both the records, materials, instruments, and models of the German rocket program, the program that Germany’s Adolf Hitler hoped would become his wonder weapons of magic to reverse his ailing fortunes in his lost war. And, secondly, and more importantly, both the emerging Cold War rivals in the immediate post-war period captured numerous German scientists, some of them bona fide Nazi Party devotees. Some histories may say that one side or the other got more of or the better of one German asset as opposed to the other. Allowing this as only immaterial propaganda, both the Americans and the Soviets captured, and put to work, plenty of all the confiscated German scientist, engineers, documents, and equipment.

Among the most famous of the German scientists, Wernher von Braun, the genius behind Hitler;’s rocket program, found refuge with his invaluable skills in the service to the United States. Hitler’s most successful rocket, designated the A-4, also known as the V-2 (V stood for “Vengeance Weapon,” or “Vergeltungswaffen”), a true guided ballistic missile, produced von Braun’s penultimate tribute for Nazi power. Once they got into the possession of the Americans and the Soviets they became the basis for nearly all early post-war research and experiments. For the rest of his life, as an American space program designer, von Braun received deserved questions and suspicions by the press and human rights advocates for his wartime help to Hitler and the Nazis. In the last years of the war, especially as Germany produced A-4/V-2 systems on an industrial scale, the German rocket program functioned and achieved tactical success by the benefit of slave labor, particularly by Jewish concentration camp inmates.

Many of the details of the Soviet rocket program remained cloaked, but it also benefited from scientist with similar stripes as von Braun. Due to the closed, police-state nature of the Soviet Union’s social system, the Soviets did not voice or allow qualms about their German scientists. They probably just did not care, in light of their need for technical achievements.

If American rocketry had its prime author and spirit in the early 20^th Century work of Robert Goddard, it compromised the naivete of rocket politics with von Braun and his war refugee associates.. And in the politics of the matter, the birth of the bigger rockets following the A-4/V-2 gave animated life to the larger Cold War. In the 1950s, with the US Army, the US Navy, and the US Air Force all developing rocket systems for the first truly Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs, or the SLBMs, for the Submarine-launched variety), rockets became fashionable language in the vocabulary of both the professional military and the civilian defense intellectuals.

Along with programs like the US Air Force’s under General Bernard Schriever, mirroring similar Soviet efforts, to build the big missiles capable of carrying the big nuclear weapons, a Cold War language and logic foreign to the ways of peace developed. The new words and arguments, syllogisms for doomsday or avoiding it, took the form of: “Throw-weight,” for how many megatons of destruction could the missile deliver; “circular error of probability” (CEP), or how close can the warhead hit the target(?); “deterrence,” what stops each side from starting the final Armageddon; “Counter-force strategy,” attacking the enemy nuclear weapons in a first, devastating surprise strike, to disable them; “City Busting,” hitting the enemy cities, since no useful military targets remain, as retaliation for a surprise attack’s success. And the final delusive definition in the logic of hopeless futures: “MAD,” meaning “mutual assured destruction”--if anyone started a nuclear war, it would destroy both the attacker and the defender completely, in the finale.

Multitudes of rockets became vogue, more glamorous than the lakes of fire and brimstone they carried as nuclear weapons. At least rockets could have a scientific, peaceful use, even if in a competitive aspect of the Cold War. From the Jupiter missiles, and the Thor and the Titan missiles/rockets, to the purely military variety of missile weapons like the Minuteman series (I-III), and the Polaris (an SLBM variety)--all of the late 1950s design and development—the next levels in the science of the Space Race advanced. But space, not war, appealed to the world public. For Americans, it first, though, had to scare them into intelligent action.

On October 4, 1957, and building on their own military and related research, the Soviets surpassed their early experiments and successes (like the SS-1, designated “Scud A”) in the post-war race. On that autumn day, the Soviet Union successfully launched and placed into a low elliptical Earth orbit the first known human-made satellite. They called it Sputnik (a name inferred as meaning “Fellow Traveler,” in rough translation, or “Co-wayfarer”). This satellite flew overhead, over any nations in its trajectory, ignoring the rights of sovereign territory or protected airspace. It accidentally set a new legal precedent in international law, by incidentally orbiting anywhere. Sputnik emitted a radio signal, and its “beep-beep” galvanized a Soviet psychological victory in the eyes of the world.

For a well-deserved and tremendous achievement in engineering applications, the Soviet civilization took the credit, rightly, and espoused their belief in the tenets of Marxist-Leninist science. Sputnik impressed the world, and gave Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev posh and credibility when he told the world that Soviet-led block would conquer humanity’s future. Besides the purely propaganda advantages for the Soviet Union, Sputnik proved to US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and everyone else that if the Soviets could put a small satellite into orbit, they could also drop nuclear weapons the same way. Time in the Space Race and in the Cold War, to develop ballistic missiles carrying weapons, became absolutely a critical factor.

US satellites followed, including military intelligence and communications space vehicles. Yet, while the entire world worried about Soviet war-making rocket policies and threats with “missile diplomacy,” Eisenhower took two more discrete, and more important moves on the solar system game board. First, Eisenhower got the US Congress to fund a budget for a revolutionary education program, one that focused on building the nation’s abilities to produce graduates in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). That policy became a game changer in every way for the duration of the Cold War, even as soon as the next decade, and especially for the Space Race.

Secondly, except for the unified military space programs, almost largely unknown and secret still six decades later, Eisenhower consolidated the rest of the US space effort in a part-civilian, AND a part-military National Aeronautics & Space Administration. At least for both the pure research and the purely practical aspects of America’s public space program, Eisenhower put a less war-like moniker on the history books. While the dual purpose programs ran, and still run, dividing the military and the civilian programs put a human face on the latter. The secret military programs continued, and still operate, mostly with a mask, a veil, and a blindfold all at once.

Moving from the Army payroll to head a section of NASA’s rocket research and development, Wernher von Braun became a very public face for the American space programs. Despite his denials of his sketchy history working either FOR or AS a Nazi (NO one really knows, only the US Government), Braun’s vision for space reflected the other contemporary visionaries or the ones that came before him—whether American, British, or Russian, etc. To prove humanity’s worth, it needed to conquer space, and do so with a resounding achievement. Whether of dreams, nightmares, reality, or chimera, the future of humanity in space, like this narrative, continues to unfold.