"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."
- Dwight Eisenhower
When I was a girl in elementary school, it seemed like most of the other kids were wearing I Like Ike buttons. Since my parents were staunch Democrats, and my understanding was limited, I thought the world might just come to an end if the popular Republican candidate was elected.
The world didn't come to an end with his presidency, and neither did our country ... and in looking back he doesn't seem all that bad. In fact, we can see that in some things he was a pretty wise man. That is, of course if one doesn't count picking Richard Nixon as his running mate.
I think it was by adding Nixon, that darling of the McCarthy hearings, that really frightened my parents. Even as a child of ten, I knew about the fate of Helen Gahagan Douglas, whose career Richard Nixon had destroyed with a smear campaign.
People then were willing to give up their freedoms, and sit by as other lives were destroyed, because they gave into fear. Then it was the "Evil Communists" who might be hiding under their beds. There is always someone to hate and fear, I guess. And so history repeats itself.
Nevertheless, Eisenhower warned us about the growing Military Industrial Complex, and we barely listened. I wonder if anything would have changed if we had?
