Few events have ever dominated the news so comprehensively as the news that Russia had launched Sputnik I into orbit, with a trajectory that traversed the United States. Searching NewspaperArchive.Com, one finds that day after day, entire front- and editorial pages were devoted to the story.

The editorial page of the October 17th, 1957 edition of the Pasadena Star-News is typical. The lead editorial remarks that a tax increase is certain, thanks to the cost of catching-up to the Russians, but predicts the American people will manfully shoulder a $70-billion federal budget if that's what it takes. Richard Nixon, always the most astute of weather vanes, intimates that President Eisenhower is more complacent that he ought to be.

Walter Lippmann gave then Secretary of State John Foster Dulles a nudge toward hawkishness: "He will not, we must suppose, have comforted himself, as did the President at his press conference, with the notion that Sputnik is a ‘scientific’ achievement which has no serious ‘military’ importance. He cannot entertain the crude idea that there are two separate compartments — one for science and one for the military — that there is some vast difference between launching a missile and launching a satellite."

A letter to the editor complains the real problem is that people just don't love Jesus as much as they ought.

The Oakland Tribune of November 5th provides a handsome graphic showing Sputnik's trajectory across the United States, and tells readers how to see the little dot of light pass overhead. The Syracuse Herald Journal of November 4th reports that RCA's observatory in New York failed to pick-up Sputnik's beep, but that Rensselaer Polytech and Harvard did. They also report "Moon Rocket Next, Says Red Radio Chief," and that animal-lovers are worried about the dog that's aboard Sputnik II.

Though the alarum seems quaint in many of its particulars, it was real and not without justification. Only 12 years had elapsed since Hitler's destruction and the Berlin Airlift - the costly, dangerous, and technically intricate mission to feed that city after its occupation by the no-longer-allied Russians.

There was nothing ambiguous about the response: America had to regain mastery of the skies, and if the country needed more scientists and engineers then — By Golly! — we'd grow 'em and educate 'em and get it done.

So the country did, and we have enjoyed the fruits of that technological leadership for a long time. We are safer than we would have been otherwise, wealthier than we would have been otherwise, we live longer than we would have otherwise, and have really cool gadgets; but today, faced with a threat no less dangerous, albeit less flashy, we are preoccupied with who fathered Anna Nicole Smith's daughter, even though Ms. Smith herself seems to have cared not at all.

Our technological supremacy has been squandered in self-satisfaction and is under attack as never before. We are losing, and the good times cannot keep rolling if we don't rally-up. From Silicon Valley's technology companies, to the Department of Defense, to the burgeoning roster of foreign-born entrepreneurs filing patent applications, America needs engineers and scientists desperately. Stop worrying about Li'l Precious' self-esteem and make him sit at the kitchen table till his homework is done - and yell at his teacher if there isn't plenty of it.