A Quote by Leroy Chiao

You saw Britain back in the early days of sailing ships. They were the sea power, the controlled the seas and they had colonies all over the world and then you can look at history and watch the way that their empire kind of crumbled. I certainly don't want that to happen to the United States in space technology.
The Roman Empire controlled the world because it could build roads . . . the British Empire was dominant because it had ships. In the air age we were powerful because we had airplaines. Now the Communists have established a foothold in outer space.
Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history.
It is a cliche these days to observe that the United States now possesses a global empire - different from Britain's and Rome's but an empire nonetheless.
Events of October 1962 indicated, as they had all through history, that control of the sea means security. Control of the seas can mean peace. Control of the seas can mean victory. The United States must control the seas if it is to protect your security.
No man ever saw the people of whom he forms a part. No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States, but I never saw the Government of the United States. Its personnel extends through all the nations, and across the seas, and into every corner of the world in the persons of the representatives of the United States in foreign capitals and in foreign centres of commerce.
Oil platforms are a technology for floating permanently on the high seas, and cruise ships are a technology for self-governance on the high seas, and if you combine these two technologies, imagine cruise ships that never dock but float permanently. Imagine if they were 10 times as big. Imagine if they were modular and could move about and you could choose the neighbours you wanted to live with.
I think it is interesting that we have come back to star- and space ships. Jet will do for a transport shorthand; yet when man really reaches, across the vast seas of space, he still reaches in ships.
Over the years, there certainly have been plenty of ideas that I've had and given up on, but for this one, the only thing that was standing in its way was me doing it - I just had to write it... And then if it didn't happen, it didn't happen. But I didn't want it to be for lack of effort on my part, so I had hunch that it would be a good story and that we would work well together. And it certainly worked out that way.
Actually, the phrase "national security" is barely used until the 1930s. And there's a reason. By then, the United States was beginning to become global. Before that the United States had been mostly a regional power - Britain was the biggest global power. After the Second World War, national security is everywhere, because we basically owned the world, so our security is threatened everywhere. Not just on our borders, but everywhere - so you have to have a thousand military bases around the world for "defense."
Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power.
Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up.
Never mind that from the 1600s until the late twentieth century the population the United States was 85% white, 12% black, and there have been changes demographically in the United States since the days of its founding. So they're trying to tell you that the United States' greatness happened because of diversity. Well, go back and look at the days the country was founded, and they do. When they do that, they see how racist and bigoted this country was. they see the seeds for bigotry and racism and discrimination were sown at the founding, is how it's now taught.
If you want to understand what's going to happen, you can't look in the rearview mirror into the United States' history, because that's done now. You have to look out at the rest of the world and look at the history of the rest of the world, and what you'll see is demonstrations and counter-demonstrations are going to become the norm. We'll have a big march, then they'll have a big march, we'll have a big rally and they'll have a big rally. That will be one of the features. Again, a pro-regime and pro-opposition media system, that will become a feature.
If I really had to pinpoint my happiest days out of the United States, I'd choose those Fifties military days in Britain, particularly my time in South Ruislip. I had a ball.
What everybody forgets is that when I was a journalist in Britain and in the United States, I was always a Canadian. And the price of expatriation does not go down, it goes up. I never felt part of the political common sense of Britain. I never felt it in the United States. I had no natural home in Britain and the U.S.
We better rethink the position of the United States in the world and whether we want to be an empire. Being an empire puts all of us in jeopardy. The American Empire, while it was just wreaking havoc on other nations, didn't bother us.
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