If the moon …

“Throughout all this nigh-unbelievable moon-landing, moon-walking weekend, the most common thought everywhere around our watching globe is likely to be:

“‘If man can go to the moon, why can't we …?’"

So the Republican Eagle’s editorial began July 19, 1969, the day before Neil Armstrong told NASA, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."

While much has changed in 40 years, society wrestles with the same shortcomings. We have far to go.

We invite you to ponder both history and the future with the R-E Editorial Board of yesteryear and commit to making a better world everyone’s destination:

“Each who asks completes the question according to his personal view of what’s most pressing. It may be ‘eliminate war … end hunger … wipe out poverty … stop discrimination … make the highways safe … conquer cancer … build a faucet that won’t drip.’

“Well, the dripless faucet is coming. Modern technology makes one think of that famous quip, “The difficult we’ll do immediately. The impossible will take a little longer.”

“And someday there’ll be a cure for cancer, too. That seems a reasonably good bet. When it comes to obstacles in his natural, physical environment, man has consistently done the remarkable.

“But just a moment’s thought indicates why the other targets — peace, universal plenty, racial justice, even safe highways — are so much more difficult than even winning the moon. The obstacle here in every case is not something in man’s surroundings but man himself. When it’s man vs. man, one set of man’s ideas vs. another set of man’s ideas, the frailties of man’s nature preying upon the strengths — in these situations the goal is infinitely more difficult than the moon.

“The prospects, however, are not all bleak. Continued evidence of man’s inhumanity to man can be cited on every hand, but viewing objectively, we think it’s fair to say that homo sapiens has made some progress through the centuries toward the dream of universal justice, universal brotherhood, universal love.

“Roscoe Drummond, whose writing reflects a staunch faith in God and man, makes a most perceptive comment on the primary value of technologically fantastic moon landing may be its ‘moral and mental stimulus,’ it’s reaffirmation of faith in people everywhere that “nothing is impossible; everything is attainable.’

“So as we turn attention back again from lunar adventure to earthly grappling with tasks more baffling than exploring the moon, be it building world government or surmounting alcoholism, remaking downtown Red Wing or correcting a delinquent, perhaps the weekend’s question should be restated as a declaration:

“If man can go to the moon, we CAN …”

Tags: man on the moon, lunar landing, opinion, editorials