Eisenhower, and I’d venture to say most of today’s liberals, don’t believe that we should have no guns, no police and no military force. Instead, they recognize that since WWII we’ve been building the largest, most advanced military complex in the history of the world and we’re not even slowing down. Yes, we need police. Yes, we need the military. Yes, we even need guns. What Eisenhower is pointing out, is that when he left office we had enough to last us the rest of his natural life and we haven’t even begun to slow down our production.
Please, please don’t take my word for it. I could never come close to Eisenhower in terms of experience, knowledge or rhetoric. Everything you need to know about our military industrial complex is laid out, plain for everyone to see (or hear) in his farewell address. If you haven’t heard or read it, I can’t recommend that you do enough.
Agreed. This quote in particular rings true, maybe even more so today than when he said it:
We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
And I furthermore suspect that the vast majority of Americans today have absolutely no idea that this is (and was) the case:
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well.
This unplanned and definitely not-voted-on change to a continuous war-footing post WWII, coupled with a nuclear-powered Presidency, in which the power to end the world was vested into that office (as opposed to, say, with Congress, or only as a part and parcel of a declared war, or defined and time-limited emergency powers, or any other way you could imagine we might have handled it) with essentially no real planning and little to no oversight has fundamentally changed our system of governance (almost all for the bad) in ways we haven’t even begun to deal with, much less even discuss. And may never start to deal with if current events and recent history are any guide.
At any rate: One of the great speeches by a President.
Lemkin 