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July 4. Good time for a cold war. Now, I don’t often advocate unjustified wars – it’s just that our freedoms are slipping away.

And we need Cold War II to save them.

All the grand American institutions that flourished under our competition with the Soviets have since gone the way of the Bay of Pigs.

I, for one, do not want to be a pig.

Let’s first examine the little piggies at NASA. Since the Columbia tragedy more than two years ago, where the space shuttle broke apart due to unnoticed damage from debris, officials at the agency have been pushing to get another shuttle into space.

This would probably be a good idea, as the International Space Station’s Elektron oxygen generator has been working only occasionally since last September, and the crew has resorted to using its limited back-up oxygen sources.

Despite dwindling food and oxygen supplies, NASA has said the station should last until at least the end of October. But that’s less than four months.

Meanwhile, our NASA piggies have saddled the Russians with the responsibility of fueling the space station. Apparently, Russia never recovered from Cold War I – which may be why it can handle our astronomic problems.

While currently President George W. Bush is not entirely friendly (in budgetary terms) with NASA, I expect Cold War II could change that and bring some much-needed vigor to our space program.

Just as Cold War I, with its healthy competition and threat of a nuclear world war, provided the impetus to spur American industry and government institutions into the world power we are today, Cold War II could put the spark back in American pride – just in time for next Fourth of July.

If we can get our relations with some country to go cold by winter, we’d be in intense competition (backed by impending doom, of course) in a couple months.

This would force the piggies in government to clean up and crack down, industry would receive a boon, Americans could once again be proud to be Americans, and Ford might actually make a profit.

The key is competition. It brings out the best in people and pigs alike, creating an artificial sort of masculine drive to be the best at something or fly the highest or teach the most.

And we are today in desperate need of improvement in flying and teaching and being the best. Cold War II would, of course, bolster everything we hold dear as Americans.

Our school systems, relatively defunct since Cold War I, would finally get the attention they need. California public schools are of course some of the worst in the nation, and it’s depressing that a 10th-grade education here seems to be roughly equivalent to elementary school in any other country.

Cold War II would force us to revamp our school systems, fund them at a reasonable level, and do away with archaic DPRs and bureaucratic waste.

On a related note, our government, and especially the piggies at the troubled CIA and FBI, would have to shape up immediately. After all, you can’t expect to run a war for 50 years without someone winning unless you have first-rate espionage.

And of course we’ll have to compete with our antagonist country in many pursuits seemingly unrelated to the peaceful war. Aeronautics and space research at NASA, for one. Or devastating new weapons, for another (and this military technology will of course soon be adapted to civilian purposes).

Sure, there may be some difficulties in engineering a war without any fighting or killing – Republicans getting confused, volatile weapons lying around, and figuring out which country to hate.

But we just have to be careful not to put Cold War II in the microwave, or we’ll end up nuking ourselves in no time.

And as for our choice of worthy adversary, I don’t much know or care – that’s not the point, after all – so I’ll leave that up to Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Now, I don’t really know whether Cold War II is really the best way to fix our schools or fund NASA, but the fact remains that these institutions – the symbols of American freedom and prosperity – really need some help.

As Americans we may be pigs, but I’d be much happier if pigs could fly.

E-mail Schenck at jschenck@media.ucla.edu if you have a need for enriched uranium.