An Eisenhower quote I can't forget:

"Every gun that's made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms...is spending the genius of its scientists, the sweat of its laborers,"

I read this some years ago and these days I think of it more often than ever.

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

Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

We were crucified...

:~~>

"We have no butter, but I ask you, would you rather have butter or guns? Shall we import lard or steel? Let me tell you, preparedness makes us powerful. Butter merely makes us fat. Steel? Lard?"

Herman Goering (to Hitler)

Takes a lot to do that. I'm humbled and grateful.

We become soulless beasts as war continues to wage. What a sobering thought. :(

I should place it there again ...

he said it? Beautiful.

and he was right on the money

the more I understand why everybody liked Ike.

Whenever I see that video of him I wonder if he knew these people. You know? Because he describes them to a "t". It's so scary and amazing. I think he could've known them.

when it was possible, even likely, that a Republican could have a conscience. Now, it seems, that toeing the party line has replaced that, in most cases. Dwight Eisenhower was one of the last of a dying breed - an American first, and Republican second. I do not kid myself that there are any of those in the current administration.

A modern Republican would probably ridicule that particularly incisive quote. Try and picture Karl saying that - without breaking up. Or try to imagine Dubya putting that thought, that sentence together. Then try to imagine him being able to say it.

He would probably be considered a conservative or moderate democrat. :crazy: The republican party today is so crazy. I wonder if all of them (the old republicans) are rolling around in their afterlife in dismay.

The first time I read about him I remember wondering why he never spoke out against what McCarthy was doing. Someone told me a while back he had worked behind the scenes counter to what McCarthy was doing.

What I find particularly fascinating is that this was only a few years before the US became a nuclear power.

And there is no way any real leader today would have the brass balls to say something like this...most especially a republican one.

Off to find a good biography of the man :)

when Eisenhower became president in 1952. Hiroshima, Nagasaki - August, 1945. Russia tested their first nuclear weapon in 1949, using information stolen from the US.

during the cold war which was how it became a global nuclear power. I believe under his presidency ICBM's became a national priority and the world's first nuclear sub was also built.

I may remember wrong, too :)

It seems he regretted alot by the end of his Presidency. He started warning of the military industrial complex during the end of his Presidency.

*sigh* That and Eisenhower's warning to America are two things I'll never forget. God bless that guy! A true republican there. Him and Teddy Roosevelt (now you can see why FDR admired him).

He was a little ahead of his time too. I absolutely love this quote:


"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

"Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star", 149
May 7, 1918

A machine tool puts money in circulation. The operator gets paid by the production. A bomb costs money to maintain and produces nothing. Any security it might purchase comes at an enormous cost.

I'd never heard that. That is a truly great quote.
This is the kind of thing we all really need to hear/read.
Thank you very much, cynatnite.

I'm adding my nomination for this one.

If only our next President could be in the mold of a Teddy Roosevelt. Conservation, corporation busting, anti trust, enviromentalism.

We really need somebody to makes these corporations small enough to drown in the bathtub!

-85%

'beware of the military industrial complex'...Eisenhower.

Eisenhower was a solder, bush* is a pussy.