In his state of the union address, Obama called this our Sputnik moment, referring to the massive infusion of federal funds into math and science education following the launch of Sputnik so that we could humiliate the USSR in the race to the moon. The fear we were losing the cold war led to the National Defense Education Act of 1958, the first large-scale federal involvement in K-12 education. And today, Obama is playing on fears of losing high tech jobs to China, India and South Korea.
In typical Palin fashion, she not only misunderstood the metaphor, thinking that Obama was suggesting we emulate the Soviets with a lot of state funding and suppression of free enterprise, but she actually believed that the Sputnik program was what felled the super power, 34 years prior to its actual demise through bloated military spending and failed occupation of Afghanistan.(A better criticism would be that the U.S., like the USSR, has a bloated military budget and a failed occupation of Afghanistan).
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