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Aug. 5, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
32:22
Why do you do it? Because it is there!
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Doug Collins, welcome back to the Doug Collins podcast.
I want to do what we're going to call part two of the John Kennedy speech series.
Just the other day we did a breakdown of his inauguration speech, one in which we broke it down and really in the comments that I've heard is that, you know, If read in isolation, it would be hard to realize that this was a Democrat giving that speech.
It was about what we can do for our country, not what the country simply does for us.
Our standing in the world, standing strong against enemies.
Again, Kennedy laid forth what would become known as Camelot in that speech.
Now, later on, the Kennedy administration, although there are many who look back on it as this idealistic time in which everything was good and everything was great, The reality is that's not true.
The reality is a lot of things were brewing on the world stage.
The Cold War was getting worse.
You had the issue with the space race was developing.
We're going to talk about that today.
You had the fact that we suffered a military defeat in The Bay of Pigs in Cuba.
Later on, in the same year, we're going to have a standoff with Russia in Cuba over missiles.
I mean, there was a lot going on during this time that you would not say were good.
I mean, he was struggling with many of his legislative accomplishments or trying to get going.
But there was still this sense of awe.
There was still this sense of hope.
There was still this sense of a little bit of wonder, I guess if you would, that Kennedy and his family, just from their young and their energetic nature, was presenting to the world.
Now, one of the areas that is hard for us to go back on now, when you look at it from the angle of almost 60 plus years ago, The space race was something that was, we were not winning.
When Kennedy came into office, we were not winning the space race.
In fact, we were behind to Russia in the space race.
Yuri Gagarin's space flight on the 12th of April in 1961 was a major embarrassment for John Kennedy because he was just, I mean, just a few months after the inaugural speech that we've talked about here on the podcast, This is when it happens, and until that point, he had, frankly, Kennedy had not taken the space race very seriously, but he was shocked at the global response to Russia's triumph.
There became an even more heightened sense of paranoia as it was, you know, where is Russia going to do with space?
Are we safe anymore?
You know, is Russia going to take over?
All of this was part of the calculus when he first came in, was coming into office, and then as this progressed.
With all the other issues that he had going on, this presented a problem that he wanted to fix.
We're going to talk about it here in a little bit more on how he began to set the White House in motion to our space program to build it up, to make it not only ahead of the Russians, but actually accomplish things.
Now, he did get some encouragement a little bit later After the April flight of Gagarin, Shepard, Alan Shepard, was launched atop a smaller redstone booster.
He didn't do a full orbit like Gagarin did, but he went into a few hundred miles out, 15 miles up, 15 minutes, and it showed that NASA was on the right track.
It wasn't where it needed to be, but it was on the right track.
So when Kennedy saw this, later in May, he determined in a speech before Congress, he said to Congress, he said, he is pledging America to make a moon landing before the decade is out.
And the Apollo Project at that point was born.
But to accomplish this feat, that many folks, again at that time, seemed misguided and in some cases unnecessary.
He needed the support of the American public.
If John Kennedy understood anything, it was the fact that he understood the power of the people.
He understood the power of public opinion.
He was seeing it even when things were not the best in his administration.
He could understand that he could influence public opinion by By speeches, by also being out and being perceived as someone who actually believed not only in America, but believed in the people of America.
So with that understanding and taking this dream around space and space travel, he took from the challenge that he laid before Congress saying that we're gonna make it to the moon before the end of the decade on September 11th, 1962, Realizing that some of the monies and stuff that we were trying to get allocated for NASA was going to have to be bolstered and pushed up by public opinion saying this is a good thing.
In September 12, 1962, he made a speech at Rice University before about 40,000 people in which he laid out what would be known as the moon speech.
This will be known as the Kennedy moon speech.
And I want to break it down for you because it's not just simply laying out, here's what we want to do and here's the vision that we're going to take.
What he actually lays out, and what I want to bring out in this speech, is that he is the hopeful, it is the optimistic, it is the encouraging, it is the challenging, it is the very essence of who I believe we as Americans are.
Always being pushed, always going to the next level, always trying to live out the American exceptionalism that is, I believe, deeply embedded into us.
And you're going to see this come out.
You can understand why he was such a powerful oraker, but also had the motivational factor for so many that he could actually get them to believe in something they couldn't see.
You know, that's the ultimate step of faith is believing in something you can't see.
And at this point in time, there was no seeing an American astronaut or American spacecraft go to the moon.
That hadn't even been contemplated, you know, reality by many, and many thought it was a pipe dream.
So when he comes to this speech, This is his public platform to take further the challenge laid out before Congress the year earlier that we would make it to the moon before the end of the decade.
So he comes to Rice University and to this stadium, and he makes the speech that we're going to talk about today.
He starts off the speech...
Very interesting, again, catches the crowd, I think, sort of off guard.
They've just given him an honorary visiting professorship, and he said he's gonna make his first lecture very brief, and this was the speech that he gave.
He says, we meet at a college noted for knowledge and a city noted for progress and a state noted for strength.
He was, of course, talking about Texas, where he was, Houston.
He said, the greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
I want to start with that right there, because there's a lot of these little nuggets built throughout this speech.
It is amazing to me how people will take a little bit of knowledge and believe they've solved the world's problems.
They'll take a little bit of information and believe they have all the information that they ever need and they quit learning.
One of the biggest crises that I see in our American society today is people who have graduated from school, but have not only graduated from school, but now they have quit the active process of learning.
They don't take into account that you need to continue to be a part of learning and be a part of growth and be a part of the learning process because you never grow too old to learn, to dream, to hope.
And this quote here, he says, and the greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
And basically what he's saying here, he says, the more you know, the more questions you're going to have.
Mark Twain once made a quote, and from me being a pastor, I've really grown to appreciate this quote as I have gotten older.
He said, it's not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand that bother me.
He said, it's the parts of the Bible that I do understand that bother me.
I want you to ponder that for a second.
It's not the fact that he was worrying and losing time over things that he didn't know.
It was that he was worried and understanding about things that he didn't know and how would he do them.
This quote sort of gives us that same sort of scenario.
He says, The responsibility increases.
Our knowledge increases.
Our questions are going to increase.
It's not that knowledge is at the end, that there's an end to knowledge.
It's an end to discovery.
There's an end to these things.
He's basically saying, he says, look, the more you're going to know, the more questions we're going to have.
He said, this may not be a straightforward path that we're on, but unless we get out there and try, unless we get out there and do something, then we will never see the real results that we have.
Now, he goes on, and I was trying to get an equivalency to now, but he makes an equivalency of knowledge that is really something that I want to Because not only he talks about knowledge, but then he puts the whole essence of time in a condensed form to make his point that we can accomplish whatever we set out.
And the reality is, as he puts it, 50,000 years of man's recorded history, if you really look at it in terms of a half a century, And put it in perspective, you put it in smaller bites, you'll see how much we've actually overcome.
He says, despite the striking fact that most scientists, that most of the scientists that the world has ever known are alive and working today.
In other words, he's acknowledging, look, we got more scientists, more people.
Smarter people with more equipment than they've ever had any time.
Despite the fact that this nation's own scientific manpower is doubling every 12 years and a rate of growth more than three times that of our population as a whole, despite that, the vast stretches of the unknown and the unanswered and the unfinished still far outstrip our collective comprehension.
Let that sink in for a little bit because these are not numbers that are happening today.
In fact, we're graduating fewer and fewer engineers.
We're graduating fewer and fewer mathematicians.
We're graduating fewer and fewer scientists.
It's just we're seeing it in our R&D and the fact that we're having to get engineers, scientists, physicists, others from over...
From Asia and other places just goes to the fact that this growth that was happening here in the United States that gave us the mental capacity, if you would, to get to the moon was not being captured anymore today.
It's not being captured in the way that it was at that point.
What do we need to do?
And I've seen this out as a challenge.
What do we need to do?
If you're a listener to this podcast, you know, is the question, if you have younger children, if you have, or maybe you have kids in college, or maybe you're looking at what You know, the knowledge gap that we're experiencing right now in our college and universities, instead of worrying so much about the social aspects and the social conditioning and the politically correct culture,
maybe we ought to get back to actually encouraging young men and young women to go into the sciences, to go into engineering, to go into the math, because these are the things that give us the creativity and the answers that we need to live in the society that we're in.
I also said he also combined everything, and I want to read this to you just to let you soak in.
He's saying if you took 50,000 years of man's recorded history, But you look at it in a condensed form of the first half of the century.
Remember, he's doing this in 1962, so just a little bit past the first half century.
I love the way he puts this.
He's trying to make it understandable that even though there is a lot to do, if you break it down and look at it in manageable parts, and how fast and how far we've come, this can be done.
He said, stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years of the 55,000 years of recorded history.
So for the first 40 years, which counts the thousands of years of man's history, we don't really know a lot about it.
He said, except at the end of them, advanced man had learned to use skins of animals to cover themselves.
Then about 10 years ago, again, putting this in that half-century perspective, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter.
Only five years ago, man learned to write and to use a cart with wheels.
Christianity, if taken in this condensed form, began less than two years ago.
The printing press came this year, and less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of history, the steam engine provided a new source of power.
Newton explored the meaning of gravity.
Last month, electric lights, telephones, and automobiles, and airplanes became available.
Only last week did we develop penicillin, television, nuclear power, and now if America's spacecraft needs in reaching the Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
Again, the way he puts this, I think, encourages others that there is a lot going on, but we've rapidly advanced that this is not without our reach.
And he talks about this breathtaking pass and opening up business.
He challenges each of us.
To say there is more that we can have.
And in looking into space, this was something that was not looked at as easy.
There was not a genuine consensus by the time of this speech that this was where we ought to be spending money, that there was a real fascination with what can we do and what can we become if we choose this path towards space exploration.
It was interesting that he also then quotes William Bradford in the founding of Plymouth Bay Colony, who said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties and both must be enterprise and overcome with answerable courage.
In other words, this isn't going to be easy.
He's laying it out.
He doesn't want anybody to come to think, okay, this can be just easily conquered.
This idea that we can go to the moon or space exploration is going to be something that's going to be fraught without danger, that everybody can do it.
He's saying, no, this is not what is happening.
But what he also then continues on.
He says that man in his quest for knowledge and progress is determined and cannot be deterred.
The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the greatest adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space.
He also then, as an interesting paragraph, the next paragraph basically is a real direct threat or direct shot across the ballot, Russia, when he says, look, we're gonna go there for freedom and we're gonna continue invention and we're gonna go to space with a banner of freedom and peace, unlike the conquest that many would fear Russia or others would have.
Again, setting it up in very contrast terms that the people would understand in what they're looking at.
This gives a speech that is looking forward, examines the reality of the world, and then looks forward as we go.
Then he gets into what is seemingly so lacking in many times liberals and I think, frankly, sometimes conservatives as well, is that leadership is going to matter.
He said, yet the vows of this nation can only be fulfilled if we in this nation are first and therefore intend to be first.
In short, our leadership in science and industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading spacefaring nation.
And he says, we set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, new rights to be won, and there must be one and used for progress for all people.
For space science, like nuclear science and all technologies, has no conscience of its own, and whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man.
And only if the United States occupies the position of preeminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be the sea of peace or will be a terrifying theater of war.
He's calling on Americans.
He's calling on our national pride.
He's calling on the fact that we can do all these things.
We've been able to do all these things in history.
We've been able to come up with the industry.
We've been able to come up with the cars and the planes and the nuclear devices.
We've done all these things.
But if we do not take leadership and bring these things to good for those not only in our country but for around the world.
If we do not actually lead, then the others, as it says here, that science itself does not know, has no conscience of its own.
So it can be either used by those who want to use it for evil or those who want it for good.
Kennedy is laying out the argument that this needs to be used for good, and the only way that we're going to be able to use that for good is tapping into American excellence, tapping into the American psyche to say, this is something we need to get behind, and everybody closed in.
What he was envisioning actually, I think as you look at it, became the reality that he had young men and young women who decided Hey, I want to be part of this space program.
I want to go and explore space.
I want to learn the math and the sciences on how we build rockets and how we go into space and how we do these things.
That was generation, a whole generation that became interested in the sciences, interested in the mass and interested in how we are able to get there.
It was this building beyond ourself that Kennedy was saying this is not simply something that benefits us, but it benefits all of us as a whole.
And in doing so allows us to say for the future generations and for future lives, a hope and an optimism that is only expressed when freedom and liberty are attached to it.
Now, he goes on to say.
There's no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as of yet.
He's acknowledging that.
He said, right now, he said, nothing's going on in space.
He said, its hazards are hostile to us all.
Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind.
Its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again.
But why some say the moon?
Why choose this as our goal?
And they may well as ask, why climb the highest mountain?
Why 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?
And he jokes, he says, why would Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon, and we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Because the goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept, one we're unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and others too.
Notice what he says again.
Kennedy makes it very clear in a very optimistic, very pushing forward, very motivational style speech.
He also says this ain't going to be easy.
Don't think that we're just going to get in a room and this is going to go without sacrifice, without monetary sacrifice, without possibly, I think, implying here loss of life.
He said where we're going is a very hostile environment.
He said, but we've got to do this so that we can put and manufacture our best interest into a collectible, measurable form.
Notice what he says.
He said, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.
Can you imagine in the United States if we actually came together?
On things that, you know, solving issues and working toward, you know, business opportunities, job opportunities, family opportunities, putting our families together, sickness, illness.
We can get a collective conscience to come together, realizing it won't be easy and that everybody has the right answer, that we all need to come together to find that answer, what we can accomplish.
The motivational set forth by Kennedy in this speech is something that could resonate and should resonate throughout all of history to this day.
Instead, we have become set in our own organizations, our own cliques, our own mindset, our own preferences.
And to get together today is almost impossible.
Now, that doesn't mean that I'm going to give up being a conservative and others may give up being a liberal, but it does mean that we're all part of a country that has the resources and the quality and the abilities, if we just begin to tap them, to solve some of the major world issues and world problems that we have.
And live in peace and harmony and grow our capabilities.
We've done it in ages past.
We've got to get back to it today.
It's one of the reasons I chose, you know, these two that we did the inaugural speech just the other day, we're doing the space speech today, is because that optimism and that general encouragement that Kennedy gave to a nation to get off of our backsides and to actually go do something to take a challenge, like going to the moon before the end of the decade, He meant that there was going to have a national ethos that said, hey, we're all in this together.
We may not all have a piece directly in NASA or the space program, but we're going to make sure that our kids are in school, that we're going to make sure that we're learning, and we'll make sure that there's an emphasis on these things that we will go.
Now, he continues...
To talk about what we have done.
And he also goes in and states and said, look, you know, even though right now Russia seems to be ahead, we've got more stuff up there than anybody knows about and that we're actually, you know, have far more knowledges of people than the folks in Russia does.
These, you know, the Mariner was headed to Venus.
It was the most expensive area.
The most extrinsic piece of equipment at that time was going to Venus on the history of space science.
And he says the accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium between the 40-yard line.
He's saying this is great things that can happen, but they're also difficult things that we have to deal with.
He admits, we've had our failures, but so have others, even if they don't admit them and they may be less public.
This is, again, another straight shot at Russia saying, look, you know, you may gloat over our rockets that blow up on the launch pad.
You may gloat at things that don't work, but at least we're out in public doing what we're doing and admitting this is what we're trying.
You're hiding in the background.
You're not giving, you know, letting people even see your failures.
You're just simply showing the successes.
So, again, another shot there.
He said, to be sure, we are behind, and we'll be behind for some time in manned flight, but we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade we shall make up and move ahead.
The growth of our science and education will be enriched by our new knowledge of our universe, environment, and by new techniques of learning and mapping and observation, by new tools and computers for industry, medicine, and home as well as the school.
Technical institutions such as Rice will reap the benefits of these gains.
Notice what it is.
Again, he's putting it in perspective of what is in the future.
In other words, he's planting that tree knowing that he may not ever see some of the results that we have found out of it, but he knew that there would be results by this much combined energy focused on a plan.
Some of it would work for space.
Otherwise, it would work for other things.
Remember, the very essence of our internet started in the space program.
The very essence of the discussion that we have in this computer-generated world, the smaller and more compact Chips and devices that began in that program that were developed and focused and made smaller throughout the next decades that brought us the PC and brought us the Mac and brought us the home computing and brought us the skills that we see now today in which we can pick up a phone in one part and actually pick up the phone,
dial a few numbers and be talking to somebody else as if they're right next door in another part of the world.
All of this started by the desire to actually Begin the space program.
To begin saying, look, we're willing to learn for learning's sake.
And I think this is really where I want to focus and end this podcast today.
He talks about the budget.
He talks about money.
He talks about everything that's sort of going on.
And then he ends with this...
These sort of challenges.
He said, however, I think we're going to do it.
Talking about the program itself.
And I think we must pay whatever needs to be paid.
And I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job.
And this will be done in the decade of the 60s.
It may be done while some of you are still here at school, at this college or university.
It will be done during the term of office of some people who sit here on this platform.
But it will be done, and it will be done by the end of the decade.
A firm target, a firm goal, discussing all the issues, but saying, look, he said, I may not be here.
In fact, he understood he would not be there at the end of the decade.
He alluded to the fact that Johnson, who ended up being a part of this as the space program developed, would be there.
He said that some of you who are in school We'll be a part of this program.
Some of you who are going to school will be a part of this program.
He said, but we will do this before the end of the decade.
It is a goal and a marker that we have laid down and we're not going to back up from.
That's what you need in your life.
If you're listening to this show today and you're saying, you know, what does this apply to me?
Find goals, find markers in your life and set them.
And say, I'm going to work by the end of this date.
I'm going to have these things accomplished.
If I haven't got them accomplished, then we'll say why I haven't got them accomplished and find out how to do it.
Kendi setting this marker in the ground and saying, we're going to do this by the end of the decade, no matter what's happening, give the focus, give the determination to say, look, we're going to make this happen so it's a goal that everybody could build around.
He says...
He then brings a quote and sort of ends it this way.
He says, many years ago, the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked, why did he want to climb it?
He said, because it's there.
Well, space is there and we're going to climb it.
And the moon and the planets are there.
And new hopes for knowledge and peace are there.
And therefore, as we set sail, we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.
He finishes with a reason.
Why do we study?
Because we can.
Why do we grow?
Because we should.
Why do we want to explore?
Because there's things that we don't know.
I believe God inherently made us to be inquisitive.
I believe He inherently made us to be, in many ways, a part of the whole.
That we do have our times of silence, but we also have our times of communal coming together with our families and our friends and our communities.
But when we're focused together on taking not only our communities, our family, our countries, and we put it together, focus that energy, focus our talents on becoming better, on getting more knowledge, on answering new questions, on discovering the next big thing.
Instead of worrying about things that just simply solve for ourselves or give us instant pleasure or gratification, thinking about the big ideas that will change the world.
That's what Kennedy laid forward in this Moon speech.
He laid forward saying, look, it ain't gonna be easy.
We're gonna spend money.
We may have our failures and we're not where we want to be now, but that's not gonna stop us from trying.
So my question to many of you listening on the podcast today is, what's stopping you from trying?
What's stopping you from...
Going out and learning.
Maybe for some of you, it's time to take a step out and try a new job.
Maybe for some of you, it's a commitment to learn something else about your job so that you can get better.
Maybe it's a commitment if you're a young person to say, I want to set goals in my college career.
I want to set goals in my learning.
I want to go actually make a difference beyond myself.
Well, folks, if you want to do that, just like Kennedy, he laid out a vision.
You got to see what you want to see.
Take some time.
Write it down.
Do whatever you need to do.
Find your vision and then set a marker.
For Kennedy, I said, we're going to go to space.
We're going to go to the moon.
And we're going to do it by the end of the decade.
It's not going to be easy.
It's going to be tough.
We're going to have some disappointments.
But in the end, the journey is worth the trip.
So many of you believe that the journey is about the end.
Kennedy made it very clear that the journey is where you learn.
The journey is where it makes the moment.
The end is simply the completion of a goal and the beginning of a new one.
And here on the Doug Collins Podcast, I'm always going to continue to try to make you think, grow, and become more.
Why?
Not just for yourself, but for our country and for this world.
We need big thinkers who are willing to think outside the box to make a difference in our society today.
Maybe it's the dream that Kennedy had.
Maybe it was a space dream.
Maybe we need to go back.
Maybe we just need to research more.
Maybe it's just making your family stronger, your home stronger, your workplace stronger.
Whatever it is, find your purpose, study it, research it, grow into it, and then set a deadline and go make it happen.
Always glad to have you here on the Doug Collins Podcast.
Thanks for listening.
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