It was Eisenhower who famously warned of the coming military industrial complex, and he was right on the money. But he also gave a speech in the second year of his presidency that was just as timeless. And with the neocons pushing for yet another war, it's worth reading today.

http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/speec ... 0Peace.htm

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

The neocon douche bags that control the Republican party foreign policy and defense are so extreme that Eisenhower today would be an America-hating flaming liberal to the left of Dennis Kucinich.

That having common sense is a "liberal" pursuit is a real shame. Let's not forget though, the 1950s were not some intellectual utopia. Facing off against Eisenhower was Joseph McCarthy and the very real public psychology that fed McCarthyism. The only reason Eisenhower could get away with speaking intelligently was his status as war hero. A significant portion of the population, at any time in history, is fascist by temperament and personality. Communist witch-hunters of the 50's are no different from those today that insist people acknowledging Saddam didn't possess WMDs hate America.

Smart man, he was. No president since could get away with saying what he did and backing it up with action.

A very important point. Republicans argue the exact opposite (give us more money for the military or terrorists will destroy all of our schools and hospitals), and any Democrat who tried to echo Eisenhower would be accused by both the media and conservatives of socialism (more money for hospitals!?!) and hating the troops.

Yeah, but the power structure would kill any motherfucker in the executive branch who'd think like that. Too risky.

There's a fun little spoof of this speech in the comments leading off a reddit thread discussing the Burj Dubai Skyscraper...

I don't understand why Dubai is being artificially turned into a happening town. It's Las Vegas without tons of booze, whores or gambling. So what is it? Pretty lights? Branson MO with a different religion?

I'm not quite sure how that post fits into this thread - - it's an interesting topic, but then again so's the one we're discussing here...

Would be an interesting discussion on its own thats for sure. But booze and whores are pretty attainable in Dubai. Not sure about the gambling.

That's the beauty of being a theater commander in WW2: the military was his.

Eisenhower was widely respected the Veteran crowd and the Army was his and all.


Eisenhower really was a man who should been a democrat.

Today he would be.

He could still be Republican, someone like Colin Powell (minus the UN travesty).

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

Sorry, but Eisenhower is out there in Kucinich territory. To modern Republicans, this speech is the equivalent of a communist manifesto. No way he's a Republican. And if he is, he's certainly not their president.

Sometimes I suspect the fascist tone of today's discourse reflects a deep malaise in American standing -- a jingoistic McCain victory would only symbolize the rotting of an empire in decline, of a disillusioned American populate flailing wildly as the world passes us by. When a country feels victimized, it demands a Mussolini to rally the masses.

well we can sit here and blame McCain for everything, but it is Obama's fault he is tied because after he beat Hilary he started to act like he already won.

No one is blaming McCain for anything. He's not the president and hasn't done anything to invite blame. Making fun of stupid people for being stupid, though, is an all-American pastime that I'm more than glad to indulge in.

Had anyone even mentioned McCain in this thread?

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

Remove yourself from the day-to-day minutia of this election cycle and look around. The world is more liberal today than it ever was. People travel freely; international trade is more prominent than ever, and thanks to the Internet, we can share opinions with a guy from next town over or the gal in China.

The world today could not be more different from the world 70 years ago.

...and Krem swings the pendulum all the way t'other side - - holy utopia Kremman!

I don't handle dairy well, give me a couple olives.

Funny thing is, I do look around. Do you? Beyond the superficiality? I'm not talking about European vacations or interracial dating. Civil rights has advanced far, but anti-intellectualism is much more pronounced today -- there is profound disrespect at the national level for science and knowledge in general. It doesn't matter if you share the truth with someone halfway around the world if your government gets elected on the basis of lies; when leadership makes a sport of insulting knowledge. Religious movements that would have invited scorn and ridicule in national media of yesteryear are openly accepted as commonplace.

I struggle to understand what your basis for comparison is. Anti-intellectualism is much more pronounced today as opposed to what period of time? What is the measure?

On top of all this, why is it that the government's attitude has to be the measuring stick for anything? This is a fairly free country; you have no barriers from to doing things that the government considers "yucky" (just don't do drugs!).

Naturally the embrace of torture, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention of American citizens, and pre-emptive wars have all been figments of our "whiny" imaginations. As long as we're better off than we were 70 years ago, there is no cause to complain, certainly not about extra-constitutional government policies, and not in front of the right-leaning libertarian/conservative or whatever it is Krem is pretending to be these days.

Ironic, no? But then rules always were for the other guy.

I guess I could be more like you, Krem. Pretend to be for limited government. Unless it involves any of the things I mentioned that were actually done by the Bush administration. Then ignore or defend or remind us how lucky we are.