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Apollo 11, the American Dream, and Article V

Fifty-six years ago, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin were on their way to the moon. What can we learn from them in 2025?

Fifty-six years ago, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin were on their way to the moon.

Modern attempts to discredit the Apollo 11 moon landing as a government hoax fail to consider at least one thing. As conservative podcaster Matt Walsh has suggested in his take-down of the anti-moon landing conspiracies, just because we lack the drive or fortitude to go to the moon today, doesn’t mean our ancestors were equally deficient.

“In this case,” he said, “what’s being denied is one of the greatest achievements in human history — an achievement claimed by Americans for America. The history of the West is constantly being rewritten by bored, spoiled people so as to diminish the accomplishments of our ancestors and deny their many incredible contributions to mankind.”

When a nation boasts a healthy, robust view of itself, it shoots for the stars — sometimes literally. It aims to do the impossible. A nation of pilgrims, pioneers, and pathfinders may go to the moon; a nation of weak men, pessimists, and armchair quarterbacks most certainly will not. America was the former when President John F. Kennedy famously declared, “We choose to go to the moon.”

“This country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them,” Kennedy said in 1962. “This country was conquered by those who moved forward.”

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too,” the president added.

Kennedy’s generation did not retreat from doing hard things. They ran to them. He did not have to coax them into sending a man to the moon by convincing them that it would be easy; he wanted to do it — and the nation rose to the occasion — because it would push us, challenge us, and make us stronger.

The difficulty of it all was not a bug but a feature for brave men like Kennedy.

Most Americans today don’t understand that mentality. And that’s why, increasingly, we don’t understand Apollo 11. Handicapped by conveniences and comforts, we cannot fathom that our ancestors might have “conquered” space simply because it was hard.

But of course they did. What else would you expect from the land of the free and the home of the brave?

From the Mayflower to Midway, Washington’s rag-tag army to the D-Day liberators, the 13 original colonies to earth’s mightiest empire, America marched boldly into the future. After we conquered the Western frontier, historian Frederick Jackson Turner famously predicted that forward expansion had become so innate in the American psyche that it would inevitably require a new frontier.

“Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only been open but has even been forced upon them,” he wrote in 1893. “He would be a rash prophet who should assert that the expansive character of American life has now entirely ceased. Movement has been its dominant fact, and, unless this training has no effect upon a people, the American energy will continually demand a wider field for its exercise.”

That’s why America went to the moon. Yes, there was a technical reason, namely, the Space Race. But more than that, it was a logical next step in America’s manifest destiny.

Kennedy traced this spirit, the insatiable quest for adventure, all the way back to William Bradford, the great English Puritan, who, “speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.”

Three centuries later, Kennedy wasn’t about to let the dream fade: Neil Armstrong would sail into the stars with the same courage, faith, and determination that animated the pilgrims.

But then, abruptly, we stopped.

We stopped dreaming. We stopped believing. We stopped exploring. Doubt, disillusionment, and ease triumphed over the basic qualities of the American pioneer. Having reached the zenith of our success, Americans became passive, decadent, and lazy.

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.” In other words, the road to collapse will be marked by luxury and comfort — a far cry from Kennedy’s vision for success forged by hardship.

A nation will either look up to the stars with wonder or down to their phones in boredom. It will either march into the future with its head held high or stall while the rest of the world surpasses it.

Which will we be?

Will we pour ourselves out for the greater good or selfishly consume that which we have been given?

The Apollo 11 moon landing serves as a reminder to the COS grassroots that adventure is more than just something we watch on TV; it’s a moral imperative. And it’s well worth the risk. The culture around us may be plagued by lethargy, but we do not have to participate in its listlessness. Our opponents may bedevil us with their constant, dead-end despondency, but we do not have to heed their faithless fear.

With a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, the God who counts and names the stars, we can call an Article V convention. We can build the nation’s most powerful grassroots army, and we can revitalize a new American century. Just like we crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Just like we settled a continent. Just like we walked on the moon.

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Created:	2025-07-17 22:31 GMT
Updated:	2025-07-24 07:00 GMT
Published:	2025-07-17 23:00 GMT
Converted:	2025-11-11 12:06 GMT
Change Author:	Jakob Fay
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