and the great railroads first came from private industry as did the canals as did the airlines and so on and so on. The only reason the space race was done by government first is because they were more concerned with killing other people with the results.

Face it, government rarely does something first or best except when one government wants to eradicate another.

The railroads were heavily subsidized and enabled by government. Without eminent domain authority and grants of government lands, the great railroads would never have happened. The first substantial airplane network in the U.S. was the Post Office's air mail service. Most of the existing U.S. airlines evolved from air mail contractors. Aircraft technology was heavily pushed forward by government spending in World War I and World War II. The first supersonic plane was a government project, as well as the first hypersonic plane.

In other areas: The transistor was invented by the research arm of a government-granted monopoly; nuclear technology was pioneered by a government weapons project; the double helix was discovered at a publicly-funded university; we're talking to each other over a network created as a department of defense program; much of the field of artificial intelligence was developed under the department of defense.

The U.S. government linked the pacific and atlantic oceans through the panama canal; the Army Corps of Engineers made the southwest habitable; the Army Corps of Engineers built and maintains the locks that makes the Mississippi easily navigable.

The 20th century is a triumph of the American model: government policy-making and funding/subsidization combined with implementation by independent public or private entities.

Many of these examples are a stretch:

(1) The transistor/monopoly theory make no sense. The US government never granted AT&T a monopoly but broke it up in 1982 when they discovered it was a monopoly.

(2) I don't think the residents of New Orleans would agree that Army Corps of Engineers should be a model for anything.

I'm sure there are some truly great non-military US government accomplishments but I just can't think of any...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_ci...

Yes, and I agree that it felt like a feel-good mission at the time.

Many people theorize, and I believe correctly, that it was entirely an aggressive posturing war between the US and USSR. We could just drop a nuke from space, with no launch to detect, so no way to retaliate in time - no mutually assured destruction, which was the only real defense either party had.

Don't get me wrong - I'm generally very liberal by US standards, and I think the Government should do a LOT more to "promote the general welfare". I just think that money doesn't care how you spend it, and governments can't set the kinds of goals that the OP proposes. Other than ending diseases, I suppose.