VISION (CONT)

Bay of Pigs. And as I applauded JFK's vision of landing men on the moon, so I applaud Bush's vision of landing men on Mars.

It has been almost a third of a century since human beings took a step on the moon -- rather as if no intrepid mariner had bothered after 1492 to follow up on Christopher Columbus. Yet 500 years from now (if humans have not blown up the planet), the 20th century will be remembered, if at all, as the century in which man began the exploration of space.

Some visions are intelligent and benign. Other visions are stupid and malevolent. "Where there is no vision … the people perish," the Good Book says. Where there is a defective vision, people perish too. In a democracy, it is up to the people themselves to make the fateful choice.

Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., a special assistant to the president in the Kennedy White House, has twice won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. His most recent book is "A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings" (Houghton Mifflin, 2000).

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