On Failure

Everyone can celebrate the accomplishment and heroism of a man like Joseph Kittenger, who took the "long, lonely leap", skydiving from the edge of space in 1960 and setting a record that is yet to be broken.  The Art of Manliness blog recently profiled his story for their "A Man's Life" feature.  But what about the "magnificent failure" of the man who tried to break his record, Nick Piantanida, whom Art of Manliness profiled in a sequel to Kettinger's story.  After a life of shoestring exploits, Piantanida died from the effects of a failed attempt to beat Kittenger's record. AoM sums up the question of Piantanida's legacy well:

Was Nick a reckless daredevil? His jumps were never about the thrill; he genuinely wished to aid scientific progress, to push the limits of what was out there, and to accomplish something no other man had done. Did he prepare enough? He did the best an ordinary civilian could have but inevitably lacked the opportunities for rigorous testing and the access to the very best and most experienced minds in the field.

What are we to make of a man like Nick? Was his inability to admit the risk of failure, and the chance he might leave his children fatherless a form of hubris? Or should we cheer his adventurous spirit, DIY effort, and manful demonstration that great daring is not reserved for the loners or the lucky?

I'm reminded of another great failure in history, Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole.  Sure, that Norwegian fellow made it there first.  And none of Scott's party made it back alive.  Still, I think there is a place to celebrate heroism even in failure.  Scott himself thought so, as he wrote in his journal these words, recorded on a memorial to the Terra Nova expedition in Queenstown, New Zealand:

For my own sake, I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardship, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks; we knew we took them.  Things have come out against us, and therefore we have cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last. Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale.

Blog Bomb for Geert Wilders

Geert Wilders is a Dutch politician who lives under police guard because his life is threatened by radical Islamists.  Dutch Islamists have already murdered the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and forced Van Gogh's collaborator, the Somali-Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to take asylum in the US.  These three have been targeted for the same deeply ironic reason: they have all alleged that political Islam's penchant for violence makes it incompatible with Dutch society's traditional ethic of tolerance and commitment to Enlightenment values.  Not to be outdone by the Islamists where irony is concerned, Dutch prosecutors have chosen to put Wilders on trial [Correction:] after Dutch prosecutors chose not to pursue charges, the Dutch Court of Appeals has ordered Wilders to be tried in response to public complaints regarding his outrageously hateful comments about how the people who are trying to kill him are, you know, trying to kill him.  The Netherlands, see, despite her aforementioned Enlightenment history, has no freedom of speech protections that approach the weight of America's First Amendment (for what that's worth anymore).

This story needs to be told, so I was glad to hear from John Derbyshire that someone's gone and designated this Thursday to host a little blogoriot on the subject.  Parapundit's got the scoop on how this works, but short of it is this: if you support freedom of speech no matter who feels cranky when they hear it, if you think the Wilders story is something America and the world needs to be paying attention to, then you should blog about it this Thursday.  Tell your friends.

A Name to Remember: Gao Zhisheng

Gao Zhisheng is an astonishingly courageous man, a lawyer who has stood up to defend "Falun Gong practitioners, “house church” activists, and other targeted citizens." Doing this, of course, he painted a bullseye on himself and has been imprisoned and brutally tortured. Since encouraging his wife and children to flee the country for the U.S., he has been "disappeared". Jay Nordlinger makes some poignant remarks on the letter his wife has sent the U.S. Congress:

My friends tell me that this great nation of the United States, which regards human rights as a cornerstone of its foreign policy, would never just sit and watch my husband suffer and do nothing.

I’m afraid her friends are wrong: terribly, grievously wrong.

More:

Thus they encouraged and advised me to write to you to seek help. I remember that, when my husband was still free, whenever major human rights cases arose in China, he would always look towards the United States. He always said: The United States is the cornerstone of world freedom, human rights and social order; the United States would not tolerate despotic rule and the wanton abuse of the weak and the masses.

Does the United States deserve such beliefs about it, such faith in it?

Does it? Do we? After all the times people standing against tyranny have looked to us, only to see us wipe our hands and walk away?

I pray that the Congress will take a stand. I know there's precious little that can be done against a Chinese government that holds all the cards. In the meantime, we can remember the name of Gao Zhisheng.