Ok, I will admit it. I am old. I was born during the first Eisenhower administration, but JFK is the first president I truly remember. What he and his brother, Bobby, stood for shaped my earliest political views -- views that have only grown stronger and more liberal with the passing years. From family and history, I learned what an ineffective president Eisenhower supposedly was. His great military leadership ability did not translate to the civilian world. Therefore, I was never a fan of Ike.
In recent days, I happened across a quote by Eisenhower regarding the very programs our Republican Congress continues to threaten -- Social Security and Medicare (along with education, civil rights, equal rights, and more). It was part of a letter written to his brother in 1954. I think it sums up nicely what average Americans are trying to tell the idiots who want to gut programs that help the majority of Americans.
"But to attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything--even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon "moderation" in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
Amazing! A Republican that supports programs that help average Americans. Better yet, he calls out one of the wealthiest men in the nation (at the time) as “stupid”. Can you imagine what he would think of the likes of the Koch brothers and the conduct of Congress today?
As if this weren’t enough, I found another quote that applies to today’s Congress and its way of thinking as well. Ike further demonstrated his belief that people come first in an earlier speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Read this carefully and imagine any politician saying this today.
“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 fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane 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 is, I repeat, 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. ... Is there no other way the world may live?”
Schools and homes before bombers and warships? Unlike today’s politicians, Ike knew first-hand about war and he did not want it to happen again. He was not saying we should not have the military but that it should exist in perspective to all else. He saw that the right path lay in helping people. If a man who lived and breathed war and the military for much of his life could reach this conclusion, why can’t today’s politicians who have never seen a battlefield?
It’s just some food for thought. We need to be thinking because it is quite obvious that our elected officials are not.
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