American Victory Is a Global Achievement

Did you know that, according to Hollywood, Neil Armstrong did not actually plant an American Flag on the moon? Well... that's not quite accurate. But director Damien Chazelle apparently thinks that the planting of the flag is so insignificant that it's not worth mentioning in his biographical movie about Armstrong and his achievements.

Conservatives are fired up about this, and they have reason to be. But much of their passion-driven response has been misguided toward Canadian actor Ryan Gosling's defense of his director's decision. Gosling said,

"I think [the moon landing] was widely regarded in the end as a human achievement; that's how we chose to view it."

Ryan Gosling is not wrong, conservatives. Think about it. When the United States won the "space race" against the Soviet Union, that was indeed an achievement for all humanity. It displayed the superiority of Western freedom and forecasted the coming defeat of Communist tyranny to the entire world. Planting the American Flag in the soil of the moon claimed victory for the West over the future of mankind.

To all you reactionary conservatives out there who are shouting that the moon landing was our victory and our achievement, your heart may be in the right place, but your head is not. The answer to the political Left's stale globalism is not "America Only" but "America First." The leadership of the United States (not the U.N., not the EU, not NATO) makes the modern world what it is today. The American flag deserves a place in Chazelle's movie precisely because America's achievements are humanity's achievements.

It is an amazing thing that a man walked on the moon. But the fact that he was an American made a whole world of difference.