Slightly used...

NASA is putting two space shuttles up for sale at the low, low price of $28.8 million each. I mean, come on, that’s a steal at twice the price. It’s a friggin’ space shuttle after all. And yeah, I know it’s technically not for sale to individuals, but between the bunch of us, surely we can find some state or local government that wouldn’t mind picking it up for us… Sort of like the guy who bought beer for you before you were 21. All we’d actually be paying for was the shipping and handling of getting the thing from Houston to our destination of choice. It’s so much better than a Shamwow or even that crap that Billy Mays use to peddle in the small hours of the morning. So if anyone out there has a really big garage or wants to make a donation, get in touch! Discovery is already spoken for, but Atlantis and Endeavour are still available. Act now to take advantage of this special offer before supplies run out!

Watching the world wake up...

Tell most people younger than me that there were once two Germanys and two Berlins and they'll look at you like you've suddenly sprouted a third arm in the center of your chest. They don't remember a world where a great city was divided by concrete barricades and when all of Europe was divided by an iron curtain; or when two superpowers stood toe-to-toe and tried to spend one another into oblivion through proxy wars and an arms race. And then we watched that world that we had all grown up with dissolve before our eyes on cable television.

If a man is extraordinarily lucky, he gets to live through that kind of change once in his lifetime. In twenty years there's been nothing to compare those days against. A hundred years from now when the first relatively objective histories of the last half of the 20th century are being written, they will tell the story of leaders like Walesa, Thatcher, Reagan, John Paul II and Gorbachev. They'll tell stories of round the clock airlifts to ensure the freedom of a city cut off from the rest of the world. They'll tell stories of every day heroics by those who sought freedom on both sides of the wall. And finally they'll tell stories about the day that wall was torn down.

Twenty years ago today, all the world watched and wondered as the unthinkable happened, as history suddenly shifted on its axis, as the rising tide of freedom washed over the concrete battlements of an empire in retreat. I can’t imagine when I’d rather be than right here, right now.

Pondering History...

Most people thing of history as a static truth; that X event happened on Y date. The reality, of course, is that history is fluid and full of interpretation. Like the proverbial stone in a river, the rough edges are worn away with time and a more whole picture of the subject emerges over time. When you are in the stream of history, it’s nearly impossible to approach a subject with real objectivity. With that being said, I’ve spent my time this morning wondering how history will treat George W. Bush. With the rancor and raw hatred of many of his critics, it’s nearly impossible to think that history won’t treat him better than his contemporaries have. Will history paint him as the happy warrior, hell bent on spread democracy or as an imperial and secretive president the likes of which has only been seen in one other administration?

I suspect that history will take something of a middle course. The presidency of George W. Bush has all the hallmarks of a classic tragedy. It was an administration full of possibility that failed to live up to that possibility. It was a portrait of the danger of governance by ideologs. And it was a remarkable tribute to the capacity of the American people to come together in the face of withering adversity and of how a leader could fritter away that goodwill. George W. Bush will remain something of a question mark in many ways. Say what you will, he staked out a clear ideological position on many issues and then stuck with them through thick or thin. On the keystone issue of government intervention in the free market, however, he turned those stated beliefs on their head to lead the largest government intervention since the 1930s. Enigma much?

Fifty or a hundred years from now, we’ll have a much fuller picture of the man who we elected king these last eight years. For now, we’ve had the fortune to live in interesting times. Would you really want it any other way?