Eisenhower’s prescience
This is from the farewell address of President Eisenhower, the so-called “military-industrial complex” speech. Eisenhower warned Americans that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” (He was certainly right about that.) He then went on:
the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity…The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded…in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite…
As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
In 1960, military spending was 9.3% of the $525 billion GDP or about $48 billion — amazingly, this was over half of the entire federal budget of $92 billion. So Ike was properly concerned at the concentration of power this represented. Of course the military has contracted significantly since then. In 2009, even with the US being involved in two wars, military spending is just 17% of federal outlays of $4 trillion, and has shrunk by half as a percent of the US GDP of $14 trillion. So in may ways, the military-industrial complex is a shadow of its former self.
Let’s consider President Eisenhower’s two other warnings. He warned of a “scientifictechnological elite” for whom “a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.” Who might come to mind in that regard? Perhaps the pro-AGW crowd? Eisenhower’s other warning was “plundering” tomorrow in service of today. He said that we “cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.” Of course that is the rather aggressive course of the current crew in Washington. We are not only consuming our own seed corn, but that of our grandchildren. And the pace doesn’t appear to be slowing down.
President Clinton once said that his administration was being forced by the bond market to govern like Eisenhower Republicans. Ah, the good old days.
December 20th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
As Ike said… “An intellectual is a man who takes more words than is necessary to tell more than he knows.”
Maybe Barry can learn something from another one of Ike’s pearls of wisdom… “I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens.”
December 20th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
“An intellectual is a man who takes more words than is necessary to tell more than he knows.”
Beautiful, just beautiful. And Obama has just 17% of his advisors with private industry experience, an all time low by a wide margin. What could go wrong?.
December 21st, 2009 at 7:14 pm
In the rear view mirror, the liberal view in the 1950s of the “intellectual” Adlai Stevenson and the dumb but affable Ike appears to be but a mirage of reality.