MUST READ: 'Ike’s Speech' - TheNewYorker

[WillyT]

Ike’s Speech
by Jim Newton - TheNewYorker
DECEMBER 20, 2010

<snip>

A few months ago, Grant Moos was closing his boathouse, near Hackensack, Minnesota, as he does every summer, tying up loose ends, sweeping up debris. This year, though, his sister Kathy insisted that it was finally time to do something about six cardboard boxes that for decades had been stacked in a corner next to a 7.5-horsepower Evinrude engine.

The boxes belonged to their father, Malcolm Moos, a journalist and academic who was a speechwriter for President Dwight Eisenhower. When Moos left the White House, in 1961, he donated some of his papers to the Eisenhower Presidential Library, in Abilene, Kansas, but he kept some, too.

The boxes were full of pine needles, acorns, and mouse droppings, and smelled of campfires. As Moos looked through the contents, he came across a batch of folders marked “Farewell Address.” He looked up the Eisenhower Library, and sent the boxes off to Abilene.

At first, the library did not know what it had. As archivists began to go through the papers, however, they discovered a trove of drafts, memos, and research materials that had long been missing from the record of one of the twentieth century’s most important speeches. For fifty years, Americans have regarded Eisenhower’s Farewell Address with a mixture of awe and bewilderment. Speaking three nights before the end of his Presidency, in 1961, Eisenhower warned of a “scientific-technological élite” that would dominate public policy, and of a “military-industrial complex” that would claim “our toil, resources, and livelihood.”

<snip>

More: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/12/20/101220ta_talk_newton

:patriot:

:kick:

[Hannah Bell]

1. kr

i think some of what's going on now is the military-industrial complex duking it out with the finance complex....

[John1956PA]

2. Also memorable is the following line in his April 16 1953, speech:

“Every gun that’s made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

[laughingliberal]

5. My very favorite! nm

[amerikat]

7. I use that as my sig line.

[John1956PA]

20. Come to think of it, I probably learned of it from your signature line.

Thanks for using it as your signature line. I may have never learned of it had it not been for you.

[amerikat]

22. Welcome

[Uncle Joe]

3. It was not an afterthought, but I believe the tragedy is that he didn't make it earlier

while he had power.

If he had, I believe Nixon would have separated from Ike and the Republican Party may have went in to a sane direction; for a little while longer anyway.

Some historians have regarded the Farewell Address as an afterthought, hastily composed at the end of 1960 as an adjunct to the 1961 State of the Union. Others have regarded it as the soulful expression of an aging President who was determined to warn the American people of dangers ahead. But the Moos papers make clear that the address, far from being an afterthought, was among the most deliberate speeches of Eisenhower’s Presidency. Regarded in his day as inarticulate and detached, Eisenhower in these papers is fully engaged, grappling with the language of the text and the radical questions that it raised.

Thanks for the thread, WillyT.

[WillyT]

6. Anytime Uncle Joe, Anytime...

:hi:

[Poboy]

4. recommend.

I LIKE IKE! :patriot:

[FredStembottom]

8. it must have been 30 years ago.....

...that I first read that speech (dredged up by Harper's, I think....). I couldn't believe it!

Eisenhower said that?

I fully expected the speech to sink away forever. It was so obvious back in the 80's that we were launching out full-tilt to become the very America he warned of in that speech. And for awhile, as Morning in America exploded into full meth-like exuberance, the speech did sink.

But somehow it has clung to life. And the combination of scathing truth coming from the mouth of the (supposed) spokes-person for milque-toast, Dwight Eisenhower, still amazes and astounds.

[SpiralHawk]

9. I like Ike, too

always did.

[Goldstein1984]

10. Link to Ike's speech

http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/materials/eisenhower.pdf

[Poboy]

12. video-Eisenhower Farewell Address

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2465144342633379864#

[Goldstein1984]

14. Thanks!!!

[Turbineguy]

11. I was discussing this issue with a British friend.

During the time of Nelson, there was some relationship between the amount spent on the Navy and the amount of trade that was carried on British ships.

At this time such an economic relationship does not exist. Warmaking is an industry, pure and simple. It's not even driven by policy as the policy seems to be altered to suit the needs of the Military, the Lobbyists and Defense companies (or in some cases egotistical Presidents).

What we spend on a single aircraft carrier could buy a fleet of 80 container-ships. For comparison, we now have 57 US Flag container-ships in foreign trade. And the ships would pay for themselves instead of being a complete hole in the water in which to pour money.

[Octafish]

13. Operation PAPERCLIP

Got your "scientific-technological élite" right here.

Thank you for a great OP and thread, WillyT. KBR.

[WillyT]

15. You Are Quite Welcome, Octafish !!!

:bounce:

:hi:

[nashville_brook]

16. hey Octafish...there was a thread the other day about how the US

protected Gestapo agents...and I was wondering if you knew of other projects other than Paperclip that involved the assimilation of nazi elite into US organizations. or, did Paperclip encompass all areas of "elite" -- i've always thought of it as being aimed at engineers and scientists.

i'll prolly find the answer in your link...looking now.

[Octafish]

21. PAPERCLIP was, ostensibly, science types.

Other NAZI war criminals got out via the RATLINES, the ODESSA and the CIA (which used the "Eastern Spy Network" in the Cold War).

Here's a bit (jangled and confused, per my normal style, but filled with links, names and dates for easy GOOGLE}:

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

Know your BFEE: American Children Used in Radiation Experiments

Know your BFEE: Reinhard Gehlen

Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection

Know your BFEE: Nazis couldn’t win WWII, so they backed Bushes.

A fact curiously missing from American history and any mention of the Warren Commission

Of course, we also forgave the Japanese war criminal scientists in exchange for their data and their military bosses for their gold.

The Pentagon and the Japanese Mengele: The Abominable Dr. Ishii

Proud to report there's a certain redundancy to the above, stretching from our slaveholding south to the present day.

Edit: Replaced this link.

[nashville_brook]

23. wow -- thanks! i'm going thru these now.

looks like there was plenty of non-science importation of nazis, but the effort just wasn't given a name.

[panzerfaust]

17. I Like Ike (he is the first president that I remember)

[bobbolink]

18. Ike on youtube -- THEFT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-slzNi2fWzo

So good to hear his voice and words..... I was a child then, but it means a lot now.

[felix_numinous]

19. Want to know where most of the money goes?

To the MIC, who get unlimited funds. Most of the UFOs and mind blowing high tech devices belong to them.

Check out these videos:
part one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7edgqHbWCUU&feature=related
part two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dQNHFEliUI&feature=related

An interesting simulation.

[WillyT]

24. Evening Kick !!!

:kick:

[malaise]

25. Thanks for this

Rec

[WillyT]

27. For You malaise... Anything !!!

:D

:hi:

[malaise]

29. Back at you

:fistbump:

[Bozita]

26. Anyone notice that modern day GOPers NEVER mention Ike?

My guess is the speech.

[Lucinda]

28. This is the third time (at least) in the past week that Eisenhower has come up at DU

Thanks for the post. Interesting.

[Hawkowl]

30. Ike was a bigger liberal than Clinton

And he makes Obama look like Herbert Hoover.

[Sherman A1]

31. Thanks for Posting