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I think it was the March, 1801 day when John Adams climbed into a carriage and peacefully headed back to Boston the morning that Thomas Jefferson took the oath of office as the new president. This was the first true affirmation of the American experiment, the first hard test of the viability of the new Constitution.
Unlike the Washington to Adams change, this was the opposition coming into power, this was a political group that promised to undo much of what the Federalists had done and considered critical. This was the party in power surrendering without protest, to a replacement party ...and all because it was the expressed wish of the majority of the people.
This had never happened before and there was never a guarantee that when the time came for such a thing, the folks in power would accept it. That they did was what makes it possible to say that government .."of the people, by the people, for the people" wasn't just a hollow idea, wasn't just a theory on paper, wasn't just lip service.
AMERICIA , ONE AMAZING EVENT AFTER ANOTHER....and of course it was Jefferson with starch enough in his pants to Establish the US Marinne Corp and send a stern message to the muslims of the middle east.
A silly answer. As if all money would have made a difference to the already generous Great Society program, a program that wound up being a catastrophic failure that gutted our cities, crippled the economy, and actually expanded the underclass in this country. At least the space program yielded a trove of technological benefits that have improved medicine, communications, computing, agriculture and a thousand other areas of everyday life.
You're right. Should have left them all at the back of the bus, where they belong. Now, THAT would have been a great day in America.
Yes, it may have hurt us economically. It was the price we paid for the right to call ourselves civilized.
I don't think that there is one best day in American History. We have had a lot of great days. July 4, 1776 was good. Also the day that TJ took office and JA left to go back home. The day the Civil War ended, the VJ day, there are so many that we all think of.
As bad as 9/11/01 was for us, it was also a day that Americans banded together to help each other through the crisis, and the way people came together was amazing. So while that wasn't a BEST day, due to the tragedy, it was a day when we forgot our differences for awhile.
But I like to think that our BEST day is yet to come, I try to live an optimistic life, so I'd have to agree with Yeledaf and say tomorrow.
....... .911 was preceded by 8 years of budget cutting. People charged with watching our backs were being systematically hog tied, put in trances,bribed
sent on wild goose chases.......hood winked by phycologocial intruders. Like Santa ANA we were drunk and stupid ....and being serviced while our enemies underestimated their abilities to take over usa with boxcutters......
I'm saying that I did not benefit one whit from men landing on the moon, nor did anyone else I knowr To me, a great day for America is one that makes everyday life for the American people better. It gave us nothing more than bragging rights, which we already had (and profusely used) a superabundance of.
I did. Putting men on the moon put food on our table, clothes on our back and o roof over our head. My dad was a rocket scientist- I know any number of families who benefitted by this endevor.
I did. Putting men on the moon put food on our table, clothes on our back and o roof over our head. My dad was a rocket scientist- I know any number of families who benefitted by this endevor.
All of those advantages arose from the development of the space program, period. The single Apollo 11 mission, whether it occurred or not, contributed no more to those benefits than did preparation for any other mission.
As for you personally, if there had been no Apollo 11 mission, you dad would have still had a nice remunerative job in astrophysics. I knew a guy once whose dad worked for a container company, making aluminum cans. From his self-centered and narrow personal viewpoint, the development of Coca Cola was the greatest day in American history, which put food on his table and a roof over his head.
You're right. Should have left them all at the back of the bus, where they belong. Now, THAT would have been a great day in America.
Yes, it may have hurt us economically. It was the price we paid for the right to call ourselves civilized.
You ruin your credibility when you throw out facile statements like that. As if disapproval of one thing automatically means approval of the old unjust systems. It's an inane line of reasoning.
The Great Society program deepened poverty, rather than eliminated it. The enormous housing projects actually created large breeding grounds for crime in the inner city. The mushrooming tax rates, with special penalties to such things as corporate research and developments, retarded economic growth--the only true way to life people out of poverty. Medicare and Medicaid, designed to make healthcare more affordable, have actually made it less so. After all, when both programs were implemented in a ill considered rush, healthcare expenses constituted roughly 5% of the GNP. Today, it's closer to 18%. And the list goes on and on and on, from non-existent productivity growth to the stagnancy of the capital markets. All you have to do is examine this country's economic stagnancy from 1964 to 1982 to see what Lyndon Johnson wrought on this country.
But the Apollo 11 was only one event in a long series of numerous incremental advances in the exploration of space, no more remarkable, scientifically, than any of the others before and since.
Yup, no reason to party for that one, I mean, it's not like it was the stock market crash or anything really constructive.
All of those advantages arose from the development of the space program, period. The single Apollo 11 mission, whether it occurred or not, contributed no more to those benefits than did preparation for any other mission.
As for you personally, if there had been no Apollo 11 mission, you dad would have still had a nice remunerative job in astrophysics. I knew a guy once whose dad worked for a container company, making aluminum cans. From his self-centered and narrow personal viewpoint, the development of Coca Cola was the greatest day in American history, which put food on his table and a roof over his head.
Absolutely, it was the culmination of years of work. It did not exsist in a vacuum, but neither did July 4, 1776 nor October 29, 1929. But who said we had to choose a day based on your definition of a good day? I think you would be hard pressed to find any event that was/is an isolated event.
The Great Society program deepened poverty, rather than eliminated it.
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Im glad you have such a vivid memory of 1960, so that you can enlighten me about the comparisons.
The purposes of the Great Society were, specifically, to eliminate poverty and racial injustice. Your facile statement appears to be that poverty and racial injustice should not have been eliminated, in ways that cut into more money and good jobs for you and the rest of the privileged class.
I did not suggest the Great Society as a great day, but I'm speaking in defense of it as a milestone in a transition from a time when many Americans were living in destitution and dishonor, to a future in which there was realistic hope that poverty and racial injustice would be diminished, with a declaration of a concerted effort to bring that about. Whether it did come about or not is not the fault of the president who committed himself to it.
The date in question was May 22, 1964, and it was a time of great prosperity in America. A time when we could well afford to better the lot of the poor and downtrodden.
Although I think alcohol is one of the greatest dangers facing the American public, I think the day Prohibition was repealed is one of the few great days in American History. It is a rare day when all the people wake up in the morning with more (rather than less) personal freedom than they had the night before. In fact, that might have been the only such day. It even carried with it a certain inertia---people still say "Prohibition didn't work" when somebody starts bleating about banning this or that personal freedom that they have a personal objection to.
I stated in my original post that the stock market crash was a day of hope and promise, even though it didn't have the most beneficial result. Someone else said 9/11---that "coming together", 7 years later, turned into a 2% approval rating for the guy who brought us together and message boards full of posts projecting doom and gloom. VJ Day was almost as bad for businessmen as the stock market crash was, since they were all war profiteers, and had to suddenly devise ways of sticking it to the civilians, an occasion they quickly rose to.
No matter how many silver linings we try to find in the roiling black clouds, two steps back is invariably our true manifest destiny. It's those one-step forward days that are the good days, but they always get undone.
WHAT GOOD freedom to drink if you don't know when and how and why to quite.........Capitalism is great too, if you know what to do with it.........but pure capitalism and pure communism does not exist, those who follow blindly will fall in a hole , Like peace is a dream, if you know this is true then GOOD MANAGEMENT is the only answer.
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