Flashback

"The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs. 

First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice. 

Second: No nation's security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow-nations. 

Third: Any nation's right to form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable. 

Fourth: Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible. 

And fifth: A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.

...
"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. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower; April 16, 1953

This, from a 5-star General, the man responsible for d-day, who later became a great Republican president. He believed we were spending too much on defense - wonder what he'd say about today's defense budget! He was also responsible for the largest expansion of Social Security. He was the last President to have a balanced budget (Clinton had one on paper, but the debt still grew under his watch). He taxed the rich at 91% (they're complaining today about 39%). This is why I'm so disappointed in today's GOP - I miss Ike!