Beware the Military-Industrial Complex:

[apocalypsehow]

Eisenhower's farewell address has been completely misunderstood.

Source: Slate Magazine

Two excellent excerpts:

"In our time, fulminations against the military-industrial complex have become a lazy, hackneyed, histrionic reflex, while Ike has implausibly morphed from martial hero and hard-line anti-Communist into a prophet of peace, a cousin of Norman Cousins. Worst of all, the faddish zeal for the speech has fed the spurious notion that wars occur not because we choose them but because shadowy, faceless forces have railroaded us into them.

*

Eisenhower's speech deserves to be studied, but in its complete context. If the farewell address is invoked merely to argue against extravagant military spending or to stand up against limits on civil liberties in the name of war, then count me as a fan. When it's used—as it all too often is these days—to build the case for a conspiratorial, demonic system that bulldozes the American people into going to war or malevolently prolongs the fighting for reasons of profit, then it should be called out for what it is: the seedbed of some of the nastier rhetoric to infect our politics in recent times."

More:

http://www.slate.com/id/2281124/

Excellent article that I highly recommend for a legitimate, scholarly analysis of the actual context & import of Ike's famous "Military-Industrial Complex" remarks.

[whatchamacallit]

1. Wow, recent changes to DU must have really emboldened you guys

enough to be peddling MIC apologist nonsense on a "liberal" website. :wtf:

[Make7]

2. Welcome to Egypt. ( n/t )

[apocalypsehow]

3. You're free to start discussing ideas instead of people anytime now. And there's this:

"Your Freedom to Leave

All visitors to the Democratic Underground website are here voluntarily. Nobody is forcing you to post on this message board. The administrators try their best to be fair, and to make Democratic Underground a welcoming place for progressives who like Democratic Underground and who want to be here. If you do not like Democratic Underground, or the members of Democratic Underground, or the way we run Democratic Underground, then we strongly suggest that you exercise your right to leave. If we decide that you do not like this place very much, then we reserve the right to show you the door ourselves."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules_detailed.html

Hope that helps.

[whatchamacallit]

4. *Belch*

Interesting sig.

[BeFree]

5. You do refer to the Iraq invasion, right?

"...a conspiratorial, demonic system that bulldozes the American people into going to war ..."

Indeed. Bushco could very well be termed conspiratorial and demonic. We may actually agree for once.